Ship Girls Quest
by mattguellec
Summary: The world was on the fragile balance with monsters, humans and angels plotting against each others. What the world definitly didn't need was the arrival of an armada of ships in human form. Or maybe that's what it needed ?
1. First chapter

Eden was absentmindly listening to her cupid spy report. Dutifully her servant was listing all what she seen and heard during her mission and the after a while, the Seraph's attention just shifted elswhere, understanding she would not reveal anything of importance. Instead of listening, Eden let just the informations be processed inside of her brain while gazing at the infinite landcape of golden cloud stretching beyond the horizon.

Truly, the Goddess work is indeed marvelous.

After a while the cupid finished her report. Eden thanked her for the informations. She idly wondered how the stupid-looking low-ranking angel has not been discovered by this point. Weren't Promestein and her associates so proud of their superior intellect ? Or maybe they simply didn't care they were spyed upon ?  
Honestly Eden favorised the second hypothesis. She had nothing but contempt for Promestein and her minions. She was a heathen and a freak but she couldn't refute that she was brainy.

In the end the report of the cupid didn't give her any insight in the rebellious angel plans. For anything she knew, she was quite content doing her research with her little group away from anyone. And frankly Eden would be quite relieved if it was the case. She had bigger worries than Promestein, namely the eight monster lord which is lurking around the world, silently gathering her followers and strenghts all according to their agreement with the Goddess.

Eden would never dare question Ilias plans. She was the paragon of perfection and the one who created her. If anything, Eden was loyal, not like some others...  
But she couldn't get rid of the idea that trusting Black Alice was a big mistake on so many levels : trusting a lesser being, trusting a monster, trusting a monster lord, trusting Black Alice. It might just be a step away from trusting the First.

But then there is also a reason why Eden was monitoring them. They may plot all they want, it is futile. Sooner or later she will learn of their attentions. With this knowledge, she will let them do as they please, serve their purpose until the last instant. And when they will finally turn on the Goddess, finally she will defeat them.  
She could already see it. The despair on their faces when she would reveal that she knew all along what they were up too. How she masterfully planned their demise with her knowledge and superior wits. Before striking them down she will taunt them, tell them how all went according her plans and how foolish it was to oppose the Heavens and Goddess Ilias.

As she dismissed the cupid, Eden couldn't supress a shudder while a creepy smile drew itself on her face.

With this she would show her valor.

With this she would gain Ilias praises and affection.

With this she would finally be the fir-

**BOOM !**

"FIRST !"

Eden througths were brutly interrupted as a massive explosion went off near the entry of heavens. From the black smoke cloud emerged a girl with short brown hairs with an orange hair band, brown eyes, black clothes and strange metal parts all around a body.

She stopped short from the bewildered Eden, ignoring the chaos all around and looking quite pleased with herself. After an instant she nodded to herself.

"Yep, Shiratsuyu is definitly the number one !"


	2. The chicken and the glutton

The sun shone above Ilias Continent. The sky was clear and a gentle wind was blowing, making the green leaves of the forest below dance in the air.  
It was quite the ideal day for a harpy to stretch her wings and enjoy a nice flight. That what one of those said creature thought as she flew above the forest which sheltered her village. For once she had not taken the sky to look for a man nor was she hunting for preys like birds or small terrestrial animals. She wasn't either in a errand to deliver a message across the continent and even beyond as she had in the past at occasions. She had just wanted to enjoy the day, feel the light of the sun warm her body and the wind between a feathers maybe even work a sweat if she felt like it. And so far she did not regret her decision while gliding upon the wind, flapping her wings every now and then to keep her altitude. It really got her in a good mood, so much like she quite felt like singing along with the birds and bugs or maybe dancing in the sky among the clouds.

Then, after some time, she felt something weird. More precisely, she heard some unusual noise. It began so low that she could have missed it but after a while the sound of the noise grew and grew. She never heard something like it. Now that she heard it quite well, she could tell that it was not coming from the ground. In fact it came from somewhere higher that she was, even through she was at a decent altitude.  
She kept listening while searching for a visual contact with the origin of the strange noise. It was coming from the skies but it didn't sound like a bird at all. It didn't sound like a dragon roar either, not that she ever heard one. It was quite constant, so much that the creature doing it would have to use all its breath to continue emetting it. The only idea she had about the origin of the noise was that it was coming from a bug-type monster.

While she kept looking for it, she realised that the origine of the noise came from behind one of the few clouds that was doting the blue sky. One of the more mature harpies of her tribe may had advised caution and choose to wait or report to the village but she was quite young and overwhemly curious. And honestly, overthinking things was not something members of her species were reknowed for. So she flew up upwards fast, not wanting to miss the strange thing emetting the strange noise.  
However the climb was not easy. The altitude she needed to reach was high, the oxygene was begining to lack and the temperature was droping. Where went her pleasant flight below the sun ?

Finally, she reached the cloud. The sound was now really loud and frankly not pleasant to the ears. The harpy flapped harder her wings, actually sweating a little. Diving was much easier than climbing in the skies. She penetrated inside the cloud, white blocking her sight all around, and a few moments later, got the rays of the sun blind her momentaly, stopping her immediatly.  
While blinded, she heard the loud noise coming really fast just ahead of her. In the instant she understood that it was the unknown creature and her might just collide. Then she felt something flying just past her, changing sharply its trajectory to miss her. At the meantime a strong gust of wind pushed her several meters away in the air and while she let out a surprised cry. The young harpy quickly stabilized herself and, not feeling blinded anymore, turned immediatly her gaze to the thing which nearly rammed her.

Her eyes went immediatly wide as she layed them on the origine of the strong noise. It was at around a hundred meters away from her, engaged in a turn. With the good eyesight inherent to her species she could easily catch every details of its appearance.  
The strange creature was like nothing she has seen before. It was quite small, its wingspan around two-third of hers.  
It had a thin, white body. It's skin looked like something between painted white wood and white metal. It's wings were strange too. They were straight and looked like they couldn't flap at all. And while they were white too they had a big red circle on them. The same red circles apparead on the side of the body too. In addition, it looked like three small wings were attached to the tail, two horizontal and one vertical.  
The nose of the beast was weird too. It was black and the tip was grey and felt like it was vibrating. But after focusing on the tip, she managed to understand that something was in fact rotating at an amazing speed and was apparently the origin of the strong noise.  
However, what surprised her the most was the head. Or what she thougth was the head. First it was transparent and looked like the glass used by humans to not let air goes through their windows.  
But more importantly it looked like another creature was inside the head of the bigger one. The smaller had a comically big head and looked like human girl. She had also brown clothes and a kind of hat. The harpy stood in position for sometime, flapping her wings to mantain her altitude and rotated upon herself to keep track of the white thing turning around her.  
She was astonished by its speed. Even in favorable condition she might not be able so keep up and right now they were so high that her breath was ragged and her members were tiring more than usual from the lack of oxygen.

Meanwhile the strange white creature kept turning and the smaller one kept gazing at her with a curious look. Then she let what looked like a small smile and waved at her.  
The young bird like monster was still confused but she took the friendly gesture well and tried to do the equivalent, which proved to be quite difficult. Looking satisfied, the small girl inside the flying beast broke eye contact with her and at the same time the white thing broke its turn, flying away from her.

The bird monster understood that the strange creature was going away. The idea of following it crossed her mind but she disgarded it. She could not keep up with its speed and was actually feeling quite tired. Maybe living a tranquil and peaceful life made her out of shape ? Anyway she had to go back to the village and report what she has seen to the queen.

So without further delay, the harpy dived to the forest. In the back of her mind she wondered if her encounter with the strange white creature meant something for herself and the world.

Several hundred kilometers away, coast of the Southern Continent.

A young maiden with long brown hair, brown eyes and a pretty round face was facing the horizon. She wore a black munetane over a red and white miko outfit. Her long sleeves were tied below her armpits and in her hand rested a japanese bow.

The young woman was standing on the calm seas like any humans would on land. A gentle smile was present on her face as she lost herself in her througths.

"Akagi-san ? Is something wrong ?" Asked a respecful voice at her side.

Akagi shifted her gaze from the horizon to her smaller companion to her side. The fleet-carrier let her smile grew at the sight of her mild concerned escort.  
She really apprecied Fubuki concern and she way she looked up on her. It reminded her of her stoic partner and while Kaga was away doing her own duties, she was glad to have the destroyer who idolized her by her side.

"Nothing to worry about. One of my scouts just had an airborn encounter with one of the denizens of this strange world" said Akagi with a reassuring voice.  
However the destroyer didn't drop her worry completely.

"Was it hostile ? Did somethig happen to your plane ?" Fubuki asked again knowing well she cared for her planes and pilots.

Akagi shook her head, amused by the side-effect of one of her escort traits. The main quality of Fubuki was her dutifulness and while she found it really admirable, it sometimes made the destroyer overdoing things. Such as worrying too much for the comrades she was meant to guard.

"No it was not. It seems it was simply curious about my plane. And while I'm impressed that she was able to climb at the same altitude that my Zero, I doubt she would have been able to chase it".

At these words Fubuki fully relaxed, breathing a relieved sight, and went back to look around for potential threat. Akagi went back to contacting her various scouts and received nothing worth noting as reports. They would probably map this land mass in short notice and go back to the base to resupply.

That throught made Akagi think back of her recent encounter with the bird like creature.

"It would be nice to have chicken at dinner when we go back" she absentmindly said as a growl escaped from her belly./p


	3. Terrors of the abyss

The wind was strong and the weather quite stormy. In the sky, large grey and black clouds promised its fair share of rain while in the surface of the sea, high waves moved the water and foam doted white the sea which was no longer blue.  
Except form the cries of the seagulls, whistling of the wind and the roar of the waves, no sound could make itself hear above the sea level.  
Below it however, several hundred meters below the surface,a soft and monotonous ping could be hear by those who dwelled below the sea.

Swimming at a comfortable speed in the vast dark depths, a lone girl was steadily looking around. She had pink short hairs with some strands wildly sticking out of her head. She also had pink eyes with a small bright light inside of them. The girl wore only a serafuku top with a blue collar and pink tie but under it she wore a blue one piece swimsuit similiar to those used in japanese schools.

The quite short girl continued on her way without any change in behavior for quite sometimes. Inside she was already felt quite fatigued since she has been at it for a long time but she knew better than to complain or laze around, her hard-working personality wouldn't allow it.

Suddenly however, a small buzing noise came into her hears, contrasting with the steady ping her body emmited all this time. Immediatly after, she heard another feminine voice talking directly in her head.

"I-58, here is I-168. Goya-chan, isn't it time to go back to base already ?" asked the voice.

I-58 looked to her left. She knew that the position of her companion was approximatively six kilometers to the west of her position, just outside of her sonar range. She then pondered the question. It was indeed true that she and her team at been out for some time now, to the point that it was not the first time that another of her colleagues asked if it was time to go back home. But at the same time their mission was important and the more time they spent outside, the better it was.  
The swimmer remained silent for some time but after a short nod to herself, she finally decided on her answer.

"You're right Imuya-chan. I-58 to all units, gather at rendez-vous point. It's time we go back to base, decchi" transmitted I-58 as she began to turn back.

Then suddently at her words, a collective sigh of relieve overcame her radio transmissions.

"Ah finally ! I'm so tired... I just want to go back and continue to read my book", came a new voice.

"Yes. I think it was time to finish this mission", added Imuya.

"Decchi ! You're really a slave driver !", cried a german accented voice.

This last line triggered something in I-58 mind, sensing a vein pulsing on her forhead, she cried at the radio.

"My name is Goya, decchi ! I told you many times already Ro-chan !"

However I-58 complaint felt in deaf hears. Ro-500 still didn't get her nickname right while giggles came from the others radiowaves.

As the sky was growing darker with the sun probably setting behind the thick black clouds, the group of seven submarines approached the docks of their beloved base. The only thing that prevented them to say they were truly going home was that the water in which they were swimming in was alien to them.

I-58 pushed aside those dark thoughts as she looked behind, to her companions. I-168, I-19, I-26, I-8, I-504 and Ro-500. As their flagship, she couldn't let herself be caught unfocused in a foreign environment.

As she and her team stepped on the concrete ground of the docks, they were greeted by a familiar figure. Seemingly waiting for them was a young woman emitting a motherly aura. She had dark blue hairs and dark pink eyes. She was also clothed in something similar to a sailor uniform and had an apron with a cute whale printed on it.

"Welcome back, everyone" she greeted with a light caring voice.

At her sight, most of her team ran happily toward her. Goya was tempted to join them too but she restrained herself, knowing she was still on service.

"I-58, flagship of the first recon submarine squadron, reporting", said firmly I-58.

"Good work out there. The admiral sent me to receive your report and help you with resupply if needed", answered the woman as she patted the smaller submarines that swarmed her.

"I throught you were on sortie with the I-400 class on another reconaissance mission, Taigei-san".

"I was. However the bad weather made aerial missions difficult so the operation was aborted. I came back to base not long before you", Taigei explained. "You must be tired Goya-chan, so let me have your report and go take some rest. The admiral might need your help again soon".

At these words I-58 let a loud sigh escape her mouth. She was a reknowned workaholic but it didn't mean she liked it one bit. She too liked to have free time, at some point.  
While praying that the admiral had mercy for her, I-58 reported to the submarine tender.

Before sorteing, everyone knew they would find some foreign things during the mission. Previous ground, surface and aerial recon missions reported an unknown landscape, unknown cities and town and unknown beings roaming the lands. Not even far before their departure, some women with half fish bodies were sighted lurking in the waters around the base. So I-58 and the others were midly surprised to find strange creatures roaming in the depths of the sea.

The first report came from I-504. The small italian submarine was quite surprised when a "big Jellyfish lady" was appeared in front of her. The contact turned to be quite hostile since it tried to catch I-504 with it's tentacles. Fortunally she managed to evade and get away. She observed that while the creature attacked her, she didn't seem motivated to chase and wasn't even particulary fast, seemingly drifting along with the current.

The second report came from I-19 while she explored the sea floor. There she she met several other creatures : one had the upper body of a woman and a lower body of a red sea cucumber. Another was a pale looking woman living in a seashell with a lot of tentacles. And the last was another woman with the lower body of an Anemone. While Iku wasn't attacked by any of them, the lively and honestly noisy submarine went stayed strangely silent for the rest of the mission.

The last report of importance without accounting the topographic datas, was the discovery of a large structure looking like a building on the sea floor. It was I-58 who found it and while she could have investigated it further, she decided against it since her sonar detected a lot activity around it.

As Goya finished her report, she looked at Taigei who was taking notes on a small notebook with a small submarine-like print on it. After she finished scribing, she turned to I-58 with a smile.

"You did a good work. I'm sure the admiral will be pleased. I'll handle the rest so you and the others are now dismissed", she said.

Then Taigei let her gaze fall on one particular submarine which was quite uncharacteristically quiet and away from the rest. Indeed, I-19 looked nothing like her former self. The busty submaring known for her flirty attitude had her head down, her vibrant blue hairs covering the top of her face.

"Iku-chan... Are you alright ?" asked tentatively the worried Taigei.

At first Iku didn't react. Then, when the submarine tender approached her, I-19 suddently threw herself at her waist, sobbing loudly.

"Iku-chan ! What's wrong ?" asked the now alarmed Taigei.

"I..." began the sobbing submarine before looking up at the motherly shipgirl with big tears rolling out of her eyes. "I lost !" she cried loudly.

Taigei was about to asked what she meant about that but unexpectedly Iku continued.

"Their boobs were so huge ! And what with those tentacles ! It looked like they went out a porn magazine ! So lewd ! Waaah ! This is cheating ! I hate this world !"

Iku crying rant continued some times but everyone already knew better than to say anything. I-19 always had some loose screws and now the self-proclaimed "lewdest thing in the naval base" was facing an identity crisis.

I-58 let another heavy sigh. She was fine with doing a lot of jobs but there is no way she will deal with Iku bullshit.

**A/N :**

**Hello there. Those are my first author notes on this fanfic. First I want to thank everyone who took the time to read this story, specially the person who reviewed. Thanks for pointing the error that I made and I hope you will be pleased to read the rest of this story.**

**Since I don't plan to do A/N at the end of every chapters, I will take this occasion to give some precisions about this story**

**First, I am not an native english speaker. I'm actually french and while I can read english just fine, writing in english is quite a challenge. So there is a high probability that the chapters contains gramatical errors and weird phrasing. If so, don't hesitate to notify me in the reviews. And if someone is proposing for beta-reading, I am all willing to accept.**

**Now about the story. While this is not the first fanfiction I wrote or even published, it is the first story I wrote in english and posted on this site. So, beside the difficulties of writing in a foreign language, there is also the problem of me doing mistakes with the chapter publications (reposting the same chapter, bad editing, ect...).  
About the rating of this story : I don't plan to write sex scenes and the likes but Monster Girl Quest being Monster Girl Quest, there is a possibility that the rating may change to M.  
**

**Originally, this story was planned to be a one shot. The first chapter was something which was stuck in my mind for some time and I found it quite funny. So it's mean that the next chapters including the second and this one, are me expanding the concept of this story. As such I don't really know where exactly this will go but I still have some ideas. For the time being the form of the chapters will remain the same : ship girls interacting with the world of monster girl quest. If you have suggestions, feel free to share them and I'll see what I'll do with it.**

**Finally, I'll end this author note with the publication. Since I'm a college student, I'll publish when I am not too busy with classes, homework and the like. So expect irregular updates.**

**Thank you for reading, feel free to review and have a nice day.**


	4. Planning the next steps

"Admiral, I am bringing you the submarines's patrol report. Taigei-san just gave it to me", said a you woman with long black hairs and glasses as she entered a room which looked exactly like the office of someone of some hierarchical importance, a paper in hand.

The room was pretty spacious and had a varnished woord floor. Next to the door where the young looking lady stood by, was a coat hanger with a white coat with golden buttons and several military straps. At the top of the hanger was also a white cap with a black visor.  
To the left wall, a large shelf served as a small library with a lot of books ardoning it. A large portion of them were about military tactics but a nearly equally quantity was about World War II records, tactics and history. Quite surprising, among those books were a few novels and even children and teenagers books.  
At the opposite side of the room was a mountain of folder boxes and folder cases coutaining various documentations. The messy state of this part of the office contrasted to the small library with its neatly rows of books. But more than a lack of care, the disordely state of the documents transmitted more a sense of urgency and intense use.  
Finally at the back of the room, next to a windows which showed a direct view of the docks, was a huge desk of light brown wood. The top of it was flooded by papers, documents, books and reports, so much that several pens were temporally lost under some sheets, requiring new ones which shared their fates no long after.

At the words of the young woman, an acknowledging grunt excaped the form of the person sitted behind the desk, on a expansive looking chair. The man was begining to age as witnessed his graying hairs. He was easily in his late fourties and could have started to go through his fifties. He wore a white naval japanese uniform given to those who ranked high in the japanese navy and the sets of medals on his right breast and stripes on his shoulders could tell anyone that he was the person in charge.  
After finishing writing a final _kana_ on a already blackened sheet of white paper, the man leveled his gaze to stare at the young woman who waited patiently during the few seconds which preceded her entry. Tired brown eyes met blue spectacled ones and at the sight of them, a small smile crossed the lightly wrinkled face of the Admiral.

"Thank you Ooyodo. I trust you already went through it ? Could you do me the favor as to give me the shortened version of it, please ?" said the man with a deep voice that was surprisingly gentle.

"Right away, sir" responded immediatly the woman before looking down to the document. "The submarine patrol under I-58 explored the vicinity of the waters around the naval base and even went a bit farther".

"I guess I can always count on Goya to always do a little bit of zeal in her work", lightly joked the admiral.

"Quite, sir", smiled Ooyodo before continuing her report. "As we expected, the submarines made contact with several alien creatures bearing sea-animals features. Those reported were respectively : Jellyfish, Anemona, Sea-cucumber and some kind of Sea-shell. One of them proved to be hostile and attacked I-504 on sight. She managed to evade the attack and the hostile immediatly gave up the chase. Others contact were made by sonar by I-58 but she decided against approaching them. At this occasion she discovered the exitence of an underwater structure which seemed to attract a lot of activity. Finally, the submarines collected the topographical datas of the sea floor. Those informations are waiting to be processed and will be available shortly".

As she finished her report, Ooyodo gaze went back to her commander. The man looked deeply in thought, as he usually was when he received a report. So the young woman waited patiently. It didn't bother her one bit. She rather appreciated that her admiral took time to really listen and ponder which information she gave him. It was better than having the impression that he just heard was she said without really listening.  
After a while the admiral emerged from his pondering.

"With this report," he began, "I think we finished the first step of our special reconnaissance plan. You already transmitted the reports of Akagi and Kaga recon task forces from the landmass of the south. Earlier I received informations from the others recon missions of the rest of the carriers, seaplane tenders and light carriers around the central continent. The northern fleet transmitted their will to abort their mission due to bad weather, proposition which I accepted. It's seems the weather in these parts tend to be difficult and I don't want to risk to send so much naval assets in those unfavorable conditions."

"And the ground reconnaissance groups ?" asked Ooyodo.

"Most of the southern part of the central continent is already roughly mapped. Shiratsuyu and Harusame took the initiative to climb to the top of a tall mountain and since it will give them an overview of the area, so I let them do", responded the admiral.

"So the next step is..."

"Yes. More reconnaissance missions. Complete maping of the central continent. Contact with the local. The other officers are quite worried of the attention we will gather but I think it is finally time that we learn where we are and how to get back to Japan.

At those words Ooyodo felt a shiver go through her body. As everyone, she was impatient to do something about this situation. As incredible as it was, they quickly discovered that their base was displaced in another world. The earlier topographical reports proved it as these lands looked nothing like anywhere on earth, without even considering the denizens.  
The situation was confusing and for all the military discipline the naval base had, chaos was looming during the first days of the occurence. Fortunaly the admiral and key members of the fleet kept their cool and managed to stabilize the situation. The situation was assessed, orders were given and everyone had their share of things to do to keep their minds occupied.

"Fortunaly, we have a large number of destroyers on stand-by. I plan to use a substential amount of them to scout the region. I also need to find someone to infiltrate the port city not far to the naval base and collect informations on the locals. We should also try to explore the two others landmasses. And finally, in case we were to stay here in a extensive ammount of time, we need to look for ressources to keep this naval base operational", said the admiral.

"Should the carriers keep helping at the reconnaissance missions, sir ?" asked Ooyodo.

At these words, the admiral made a difficult face. "I plan to keep the light carriers on duty but the standard carriers..."

Ooyodo let a light chuckle escape her mouth. "The standard carriers sure eats a lot. I guess that the same treatment applies to the battleships ? I hope Yamato-san won't be saddened to be relegated to the reserve once more".

The admiral face paled when Ooyodo shared the consequence of a more economic use of the fleet assets. While shipgirls essence was still that of a warship, the fact that they took human forms made their handling quite different that those of ordinary navy assets. Things like moral and contentment has a consequent impact on the fleet combat capabilities and even willingness to follow orders.  
Fortunally for the headquarters and the fleet, the admiral was totally aware of this and was quite skilled to balance combat proficiency and care of the fleet members. It doesn't mean that everyone is always satisfied with his decisions and several members of the fleet were quite vocal to manifest their discontentment. However the admiral somehow finds a way to balance things out. And it was this ability that made him the supreme commander of the fleet.

"Who are you considering to send to the nearby port city, sir ?" asked Ooyodo, thankfully changing the topic of the discussion.

"Before making contact with the local, I want to know who and how they are. We already knows that humans exist from previous reports and I prefere swimming in known waters at first".

"An analogy the submarines can appreciate, sir", added Ooyodo.

"Quite, responded the admiral with a smile. For this infiltrating mission, I need someone who can blend easily in a crowd. So it's mean I have to discard all the exotic looking members of the fleet."

"I think we all know someone who is the epitome of normalcy, sir", said Ooyodo, picturing a young ponytailed girl with ordinary brown hairs, ordinary brown eyes, ordinary silhouette and a standard naval uniform. "Unfortunally Fubuki-san is currently escorting Akagi-san and they are not expected to return before a few days. Should we detach Fubuki-san from Akagi-san escort ?"

"That would be cruel for her condirering the importance she attaches at her escort duties with said carrier, answered the admiral. Fortunally for us, the Fubuki class is numerous and a large part of its members have the requiring physical attributes to fulfill this mission".

"Let's pray that Fubuki-san never hear why you are considering her and her sisters to carry out this operation, sir", sighed Ooyodo.

"Oh ? Why that ?" asked the admiral with geniune curiosity.

"Recently Fubuki is feeling quite insecure about her status of "special destroyer". Not only there is the matter of her looks but some destroyers insinuated that her younger sister, Shirayuki was actually more hard-working and reliable that her. I think I don't need to tell you why that rumor was quite a blow to her pride".

The admiral silently cringed for the sake of Fubuki. It was probably not something serious as to need his intervention but he could picture the lead-ship of the Fubuki class feeling down for quite some time. As to the culprit of the rumor, he could already hear the teasing tone of a voice calling him "master" instead of his proper rank.

"I will consider giving Fubuki extra responsabilities in the following operations. Knowing her, it should restore her pride quite a bit", decided the old man with a sigh.

"A wise choice, sir. I am sure she will appreciate. Now, about the next step of the reconnaissance operations..."

"Yes. I will consult with the other senior officers and together we will draw the plans and schedules. Expect an official announcement tomorrow or the day after".

At these words, the admiral put several documents in a folder before getting up with it in hand. He approched Ooyodo who handed him the submarine report and then made his way to the door. However before exiting the room, he stopped and spoke again.

"Thank you for the little bit of conversation Ooyodo. This mess kept me working more than usual and I admit that my mind was begining to spin for looking at all those numbers and letters. As for now, I can't offer you a treat at Mamiya's place since we are preserving ressources. All I can give you is more things to work with in the following weeks".

That said, the admiral finally exited the office in direction to the meeting room where.

Ooyodo felt a smile drawing itself on her face. The defensive phase was over and as a japanese warship, she felt better when her side had the initiative. Plus, as member of the information gathering and decripting office, she felt quite excited to this aggressive reconnaissance policy. Numerous reports will come and with them a clear picture of their situation will form. As the young woman adjusted her glasses, she vowed to unravel this world secrets.

**A/N :**

**"Im not planning to make author's notes at the end of each chapters" he said.**

**First and foremost, I want to thank all those who reviewed the previous chapters. Once again I want to thank a Guest (probably the same person than the last time) for is encouraging words. You are actually the reason I wrote this chapter so soon after the previous one.**

**I also want to use this occasion to add things I forgot in my previous note. **

**For this story, I am heavily inspired by Argeus the Paladin, Kantai Collection/Hobbit crossover. For those who didn't see it, you absolutely should read it as it is of a quality that I will never reach.**

**Still on the subject of inspirations. For the monster girl quest side setting, I will mostly use the VN original triology but since the univers in the VN seems a bit lacking to me, I will also use elements of Paradox, the RPG version. As for the timeline, you will have hints in further chapters but if I'm not clear enough, don't hesitate to ask clarification.**

**For the Kantai Collection side I will mostly use references from the game, a little bit from the anime but also from the fandom.  
The main difference between the game and the anime, in my sense, is that in the game, the shipgirls still remember their wartime service. In the anime, some shipgirls seems to vaguely remember their wartime life in dreams and such. This aspect bothers me for two reasons : first because I study history. Second because having the shipgirls have their wartime memories gives plenty of opportunities for interesting characterisations. And for those who are worried that I might twist canon characters, I still plan to keep them very close to canon and I think the two are not mutually exclusive, expectially with the game version.**

**Using the game and the fandom will also allow me to features characters that are often overlooked. After all, did you found I-504 or Shirayuki mentionned often in other fanfics ?  
I also plan to features more used characters. We have already seen Fubuki and Akagi. Kaga was mentionned and it will not be the last time you'll hear of them.**

**So I think it's all for this A/N (I probably did forget something but whatever). I hope you liked this chapters. Share your impressions, suggestions and critics. Reviews seems to motivates me to write so don't hesitate.**


	5. Ordinary looking infiltration

Apparently from the past to the present to even foreign worlds, some things seemed to stay the same.  
That was Shirayuki thought as she roamed throught what seemed to be a lively market in the town she and her two sisters were tasked to infiltrate.

The cries of the seagulls in the sky. The salty scent of the nearby sea. The smell of fresh fish displayed on wooden tables or baskets put on the ground. The loud noise of countless discussions and bargaining of numerous peoples : fishers, merchants, townfolk, travellers.

It somehow vaguely reminded her of her birthplace, Yokohama, but also Kure, Samah or Singapore during the war. True the setting was much more militarised but even conflict couldn't totally stop trade and the daily life of people. At least during the early stages.  
She couldn't really compare to her current naval base thought. Even before the strange event that displaced the naval district in this world, the base was set appart from the rest of the port areas. It was strictly militarized, surrounded by wall with guards at the entries.  
However, during her patrols along the coast of Japan, she came close to different ports, some of which she had been during her previous life. What struck her the most was how everything has changed. How the military installations has disappeared to the profit of commercial ones which has then suffered from disuse during the time the abyssal fleet imposed a world wide blocus.

However, as much as this place had a distant but familiar atmosphere, she was pretty sure that nowhere, at anypoint in time in her world port cities had women with a lower body of a giant fish living inside of them among normal humans.

That was definitely something to report to the headquarters and was but one among the many discoveries she did until then.

_Tchack_

The sharp noise of a camera shot being taken made more than one head turn in their direction. As much as they were meant to be discreet, they were tasked to come back with visual datas of the situation inside this city. Shirayuki herself turned to the origin of the sound.  
She was divided between approval to the initiative of her younger sister or dismayed at the sight of the oversized camera she carried. Why did she had to bring her personal camera instead of those provided by the military ?  
So far they did pretty well to not attract too much attention. Some people had looked oddly at them, probably because of their clothes since sailors uniforms were not common sight and also party because of the camera, a object obviously unknown to these people who seemed to live in a somewhat western medieval time.  
Nevertheless, even if they probably looked a little bit out of place, they were rapidly ignored to more important matters and so far the local authorities, in the form of armored guards, didn't bother them.

As she realised that the attracted a little bit of attention, Isonami, the girl with black hairs with a long braided low pony-tail and black eyes, wielding the camera, timidly blushed and seemed to shrank a few centimeters.

"S-sorry", she muttered as she lowered the black device.

"It is fine", rassured Shirayuki before a loud sigh came into her ears.

"Are we finally done ? My legs are tired and I want to go back and sleep", declared the bored voice of the naval base third agent.

At her words Shirayuki frowned on the form of her direct younger sister. It was hard to believe the first time you hear of it but Hatsuyuki, a girl with long black hairs with a princess cut and tired brown eyes, was the third ship of the Fubuki class.  
As Fubuki was reknown to be an eager and hard working destroyer always doing her best, and Shirayuki for being a calmer and mature version of her older sister-ship, Hatsuyuki was nearly the complete opposite. She was lazy, spent her time sleeping and reading mangas and when asked to do the minimum effort, she complained and pushed to delay her work for the next day… each time.

"I think it is a good opportunity to have you do something useful for a change", chastised Shirayuki. "Since Fubuki-onee san is not back yet, it is our duty to carry the responsabilities of the Fubuki-class".

"Gna gna gna… There are twenty-four members of the Fubuki class. Why do I have to come when Miyuki, Murakumo and the others are taking it easy at home ?" complained Hatsuyuki, her arms lazily dangling before her as she arched her back.

"There is no point in discussing the admiral orders. I was asked to gather a small group to infiltrate this place. Murakumo, Shirakumo, Shininome, most of the type II and the sixth division were discarded for reasons unknown to me. I don't think Miyuki is a good pick for any stealth mission. Uranami and Ayanami are in patrols. And most of the others are preparing to be send on ground reconnaissance missions. If you have the energy to complain, then you can gather informations for us", the elder sister berated.

"Tch… And then I through being bland would help me getting unoticed…", murmured Hatsuyuki as her sisters when back on track.

The trio resumed their mission, surveying the city as they did previously. What they gathered is that the town was called Port Natalia.  
The population was mostly humans and those looked europeans to them.  
The rest of the population was those strange being with half a body of a fish and so far it looked that they were all females.  
Interestingly it looked that the primary language of these people were english or at least something close to it. Since they participated in a war against english speaking ennemies, most shipgirls tended to have a decent level in this language. Some of them even learned other languages, expecially members of the Fubuki class oddly enough, with Hibiki and Fubuki mastering english and russian and Shirayuki herself knew a little bit of french from her brief time operating near french Indochina during the Pacific War.  
So it was not very difficult for the destroyers to read the writings and understand the language speaked in the street. However, even if they quite easily understood what was spoken, they noted that the language had some german sounding words in it. So maybe it was a bastardized version. Shirayuki filled this information, intending to incorporate it in her rapport.

From their observation, the city and probably the world they were in, was comparatively to their, really backwater. Their technological level was that of before the use of electricity, heavy industry and maybe black power.  
The political system however was completely unknown. It was nearly certain for a ruling entity to exist since someone has to hire and pay the guards keeping order but none of the houses looked like an official or administrative building.

After another half an hour of walk and observation, the small group stopped again to let Isonami take another picture, more discreetly this time.  
The team photographer took the picture of a particulary large mansion near the docks. Like the other houses in the area, this one was big, three stories tall and shared bright colors, a vibrant red in its case.

Isonami also took the opportunity to take a overview picture of the market at the docks. It was brimming with activity. Colored stands of various goods had sellers and merchants howling offers to potential customers. Many women with baskets purchased foods and the like while bulky mens were carrying heavy crates to the stands, the docks or warehouses.

"Since we're at it, we should check what kind of goods are sold and how transactions are done", said Hatsuyuki with a bored voice and in an uncharacteristically useful fashion.

The two others agreed, seeing the benefit of the endeavor but Shirayuki still has a frown on her face after the suggestion.

"We don't have any currency so we won't buy anything", she said suspiciously.

"I know, I'm not stupid", answered Hatsuyuki but at the same time a disappointed sigh escaped her lips.

The three destroyer then approached the heart of the market. The atmosphere was immediatly more stuffy as a lot of people surrounded them. They took care to keep close together and not be separated.  
They quickly came close to a stand. It was selling fruits which looked similar to the ones they were familiar with. They recognised apples and oranges.  
Hatsuyuki was tempted to stealthily steal one of the fruits on display but quickly discarded the idea. Too much people were around, Shirayuki is keeping an eyes on her so she couldn't slack off and she might be caught if she tried. She might be lazy, unmotivated and somehow selfish, but she had still the heart of a warship, and so she would not endanger the success of her mission for something trivial.

Not long after they came close to the fruit merchant, one person came to buy one of the products. A middle aged woman came and brought several apples.  
At this occasion, the trio managed to see that the customer traded several orange coins. It was probably a relatively cheap metal like copper since no state would be able to base its currency on something like gold or silver.

After observing the same occurrences happening several times, the destroyers retreated from the crowd to catch their breath. However, as soon at they were in the open, an unfamiliar voice adressed to them came to their ears.

"Would you like to purchased some of my wares ?", said the voice.

The three girls quickly turned to the person talking to them. As such they found one of these young women with a fish lower body, mermaids as they were unoriginally called, with a short blond hairs and small wooden display in her arms.

"I am sorry but we are not owning any money at the moment. We just came to have a look", answered Shirayuki, slightly dipping her head.

"Oh it is alright. Then how about I let you taste one of my products ? If they are to your liking, maybe you would come back to buy more next time ?" the fish woman smiled as she presented strange looking sea-food on the display.

While Shirayuki and Isonami managed to keep their composure, Hastuyuki clearly stepped back at the sight of the "products". The things presented to them were definitly sea food from its shape but the nauseous smell and black and purple aspect made it look inedible.

"I have some Hiei-san cooking vibes", murmured Hatsuyuki disgusted and somewhat scared.

The two others nodded and agreed that they were not risking tasting the offered products as even shipgirls are susceptible to food poisoning.  
However, surprisingly, Hatsuyuki actually took one of the sea-food offered in the form of a charned looking starfish. While her sisters looked dumbfounded, the mermaid looked positively happy and when she realised that the black haired girl would not eat her product on the spot, she thanked her and went back to her business.  
Before her sisters could say anything, Hatsuyuki grinned at them while waving her acquisition.

"A souvenir for Hiei-san", she explained.

"I am not sure I can present it as a sample of the local food to the headquarters", sighed heavily Shirayuki.

"I hope it will not inspire Hiei-san to try new cooking recipes", whimpered Isonami.

After this incident, the small group went back at their investigations. They left the harbor and went deeper Inside the city while still sticking to the main alleys.  
After a while they finally found what they looked for. Before them was another big, multi-storied building, this time with larges gates at the entrance. It had a white paint and was sticking out by it size among smaller houses. For Shirayuki and her sisters, it was what looked the more like the residence of the people in charge of this city.  
For the sake of their information gathering, the three destroyers would have liked to enter inside. However, by doing so, even their bland appearence would not suffice to keep them unoticed. Even thought it was not guarded, they had the impression that only people with business in mind would get inside and as such they would stick out as a sore thumb the moment they went past the doors.

Isonami contented herself to take more photos as Shirayuki took notes. Hatsuyuki was lazily gazing around, midly checking if someone was observing them.  
Once they did all the observations they could, the destroyers retreated from the building.  
The end objective of the admiral was to make contact with the authorities here. Shirayuki was confident she could handle this mission but the commanders had apparently other plans. And the second ship of the Fubuki class was not sure her sisters were as presentable as her.

The small group spend another couple hours scouting the inside of the city. They found nothing of particular interest except maybe what looked like a pub. The establishement was apparently pretty popular and coincidently had a large portion of mermaids in the staff.  
However even if they didn't found anything of importance during this time, Isonami took several pictures of seemingly randoms parts of town. Hatsuyuki was asking to herself why bother while Shirayuki nodded with approval. Isonami may had been meeker than her other siblings, she still had all the diligency of the Fubuki class inside.

As sun was going low in the sky, the small group knew it was finally time to go back to base at the relief of Hatsuyuki. As they exited the city, a random man warned them of the dangers of going outside at night. He mentionned monsters lurking in the countryside, waiting to ambush unlucky travelers.  
Shirayuki thanked the man for his concern even as she still proceeded with her sisters to the said wilderness.

They didn't have any problems on their way in the first time and while the return may not be the same, Shirayuki could only wish good luck to anyone of anything trying to go in their way.  
After all the members of the Fubuki class always do their best to fullfill their duties.

**A/N : **

**Thank you to Guest and MageTGM for their comments and support, it is really gratifying. I would like to ask those who take the time to review what they like or don't like about this story. It might help me know where and how to develop this fanfiction as to keep it enjoyable for you.**

**I tried to do a lot of things with this chapter. I made the plot advance a little. I did some characterisation and given some screen time to characters which are not usually used (Who is featuring Isonami in their fics ?). I also did some world building.  
**

**With this two last points, you can see that I may take my distance with the canon of the two franchises.**

**For Kancolle, I don't think I went as far as to going out of character but I may added some personality elements. One of the main reason is that you can't really create a character with only its looks and a few lines of dialogue. As I say in another review, I will try to stick as close to the canon for the shipgirls personnalities but I will still need to flesh out those characters.  
**

**Now, for those familiar to MGQ and MGQ Paradox, you may have noticed that I downright changed some elements of the game. For example in canon Port Natalia has no administrative building or the like and the universal currency of MGQ universe is simply gold.  
In my mind I have and will change some elements because Monster Girl Quest universe is a parody of a late medieval society. If you just take the example of the currency and you compare with real history, you will notice that gold was never used as the base currency anywhere and at anytime. And in canon we have no information as to who rule Port Natalia. Is it San Ilia ? Does the city has a lord ? Does it has a mayor ?  
I want to try to give coherency to the setting of this story and to do that I will need to take some liberty with the original franchises.  
**

**Thank you for reading and please share you feelings. See you next time.**


	6. Divine encounter

Ilias, goddess of light, creator of the universe and protector of mankind was, according to all human documentations, the most powerful entity in existence.

Her beauty was such that not even the finest marble of the greatest sculptor could give justice to even a fraction of her splendor.  
She kind and wise, the epitome of benevolence and her mercy and was the only reason mankind could prosper despite the threat of monsters.  
And finally, she was powerful. Her holy thunder could strike the heretics and heathens anywhere on earth at any moment. She was omnipotent and omniscient, knew all that was, is and will be.

From her throne in Heaven, Ilias usually monitored all of what was happening below. Except for this moment. Because the all mighty goddess of light, protector of mankind and creator of universe was currently taking a nap.

While it was true that Ilias was a very powerful entity, she was still subject to fatigue. Not the ordinary kind of fatigue though. Her body was made of pure light and such was ageless and knew not tiredness born form excessive exertion or lack of rest.  
Her mind however was not as immune. As her countless plans and calculations were processed in her head at the same time of her careful monitoring of the earthly matters, Ilias overworking mind was slowly accumulating fatigue. Adding to that were the incompetence of her minions and the unpredictability of some of her pawns. So it was no wonder that even goddess herself needed some time of rest.

Obviously noone knew of that. She was the epitome of perfection to the point that it was surprising that the word itself didn't come from her name. Nobody knew she needed rest and nobody should ever. Even her first daughters should not even know that.  
For that reason, mere days ago, she pretexted the need to seclude herself to work on important matters to shut herself in her own quarters in heaven where noone should (and could) bother her.

**BOOOOM !**

However, the goddess rest was not meant to last as a huge explosion came rockning Heavens itself.

The occurence should not have bothered her sleep. It was not so rare to have explosions happening between uncareful young angels or quarreling ones. The sound itself could not even bother her since she cutted herself from any external disturbance.

So what woke her up was not the sound or the tremor but the feeling that someone as trespassed the gate of Heavens which was a feat in itself since the gate was fused to a powerful cherubim.

At the realisation Ilias exited her quarters to go to the source of the disturbance. She crossed the distance quickly and found Eden and a small army of valkyries already on the spot, facing and surrounding the intruder.

Ilias was surprised by the appearence of the trespasser. She first assumed that it was the Monster Lord or her knights who had launched an assault.

Instead of the infuriating snake there was a human girl. Physically wise, she had nothing extraordinary. She was of medium height for a teenager, had short brown hairs with an headband, black and white top and skirt and brown eyes. The only thing strange about her was the massive array of metal contraptions fixed on her body and the confident smirk she displayed despite being surrounded.

"You dare trespass in the holy domain of the Goddess ?! I will let you name yourself before executing judgment for your crime !" seethed Eden, positively furious.

Ilias stayed back for the moment, choosing to observe.

The girl was definitly an anomaly. She was powerful enough to break into Heavens and more importantly Ilias didn't know who this person was. As the goddess of light, her impecable memory let her remember every being that existed and existed. However the sight of this girl didn't ring any bell and it was at best worrying.

More than that though, something was strange about the aura of the teen. As a goddess Ilias was knowledgable about all forms of lifes in existence, she even knew a few things about the monsters she dispised so much, be it to better eradicate them.  
That meant that she was able to make the difference between beings of Lights like angels, of Darkness like monsters or even beings which are not aligned to any elements such as mere animals.  
And this girl, despite looking human, she didn't feel like one. As she tried to look deeper, the goddess could feel the smell of smoke and iron. She could taste something salty on her tongue.  
The girl, no, the creature, was definitly not human while obviously related to them. She didn't even felt like it was a living thing, Ilias realised. She seemed more similar to a ghost or another spiritual entity.

While trying to unravel this strange enigma from afar, the goddess musing was brutly interupted by the very voice of the object of her interest.

"I am the first ship of the Shiratuyu class, Shirastuyu ! Yes the first ship !" exclamed the girl, putting emphasis to the word "first" for some reason.

When she noticed this, Ilias let out a sigh of exasperation, predicting that Eden would bite to the unintentional bait.

"I don't know anything about you but it doesn't matter. Know that you have the privilege to lay your eyes on the first Seraphim," said proudly Eden, presenting her naked body. "Now prepare yourself to be punished," she added as she gathered holy energy in her hands.

In response the girl aimed a metal box with two tubes to the seraphim figure. However it wasn't all as elsewhere on the metal part on her body, smaller similar looking tubes moved and rotated to aim at the angels surrounding her. From her spectatory state, Ilias noticed the presence of minuscules figures, humans looking and dressed in white as them manned what was probably an array of weapons.

As the two were about to attack each other, Ilias was about to step in. However, another explosion near the entrance of even attracted the attention of everyone.  
The black smoke didn't even disappear that redish small projectiles were fired in rapid succession at airborn angels who were in the vinicity. The valkyries in the air dodged to the best of their habilities but were quickly forced to withdraw and scatter lest they would be hit.

As the black smoke cleared, another figure came rushing at the gathering of angels surrounding the teenager. She had the same clothes and metal arrays but had long pig-tailed light brown hairs and orange eyes.  
The new girl didn't stop and kept charging at the angels while, at her sight, the Shiratsuyu girl changed her taget to aim at the angels separating them.

The tubes on Shiratsuyu hand metal contraption fired two fast projectiles at the feets of the angels, then the cloudy ground exploded, projecting the winged warriors of heaven around.  
Not waiting to let her chance pass, the girl ran through the hole in the lines and joined with her comrades. They then turned in direction of Eden and the majority of the angels force, aiming their metal weapons in their direction.

"You really put us in a huge mess this time onee-san", said the new girl as even more angels came to Eden side.

"Haha, sorry. I just hope that the admiral would not be too mad", answered Shiratsuyu.

"We will be lucky if we are not court martialed on the spot when we get back", sighed her companion.

"If we go back", first girl added before hardening her gaze as the first line of valkyries, spears at hand, began to charge them. "Prepare all guns to anti-personel and AA-fire, Murasame !"

"Yes,yes".

At her words hellfire broke loose. Hundreds of shots were fired in mere seconds, with bigger projectiles coming from the hand weapons tubes with loud noises and countless others of smaller scale came from smaller metal tubes divided on the metal contraption on the back, legs and other body parts of the girls.

At the sight of the onslaught, the angels stopped their charge to brace themselve or try to evade. However it proved uneeded as a huge shield of light appeared before them.  
The countless projectiles hit the shield and exploded on its surface but dispite the number and force of the explosion, the assault didn't even scratch the surface.

"Damn, we can't penetrate it ! It's battleship armor or what ?!" exclaimed Shiratsuyu.

"I think we should consider to retreat now. There is nothing we can do here !" proposed the Murasame girl.

Shiratsuyu nodded and guickly turned her back in direction to Heaven's Gate. their attacks didn't cease though as the small tubes on the other parts of their bodies still spitted their lead on the shield of light, preventing the angels troops to follow them.

Unfortunally for them, Eden wasn't going to let them escape. While reciting a prayer in the goddess name, the seraphim released the gathered holy energy at the fleeing teens. A massive ray of golden light shooted and traveled at high speed to their target. It was only due to the timely reaction of the Shiratsuyu girl that saved them from being vaporised as she dropped herself on the cloudy ground while pulling her companion with her.  
However Eden was already readying another attack and this time it was not likely to miss the downed girls.

"Cease this foolishery at this instant, Eden", a firm yet sweet voice echoed in the Heavens.

Immediatly the energy gathering in the seraphim hand dissipated and she knelt before the winged figure descending at her level in a pillar of light.

Shiratsuyu and Murasame quickly got up and turned around to see why her foe stopped her assault. What they saw took their breath away.

The woman named Eden and all the winged women they briefly fought were all kneeling in a circle. At the center, landing surrounded by golden light was a woman of unmatched beauty.  
She had long blond hair like gold reaching to below her waist. On her head seated a golden tiara and a red precious stone ornated her forehead. Her two big blue eyes were like gems and attracted so much attention that her long pointed ears were almost unoticable. On her body she wore a simple but graceful white dress which gave her an air of humility without dwindle her majesty while leaving her shoulder and a large portion of her legs bare, enough to let her beautiful skin be admired. A golden ornament circled her waist and blue and golden bracelets on her wirst were the last of the jewelery she wore. Lastly, on her back were a pair of large wings of pure white feathers.

Ilias smiled at the two girls as she gawked at her presence like most humans did. She then turned to the bowing Eden who was probably expecting to be admonished. Admonishing, she will receive for her lack of restraint and foresight but not was not the time.

"While I am grateful for your diligence in the defense of Heavens, you commited a grave fault at harming our guests", the goddess simply said with a gentle voice.

She could feel that the seraphim wanted to retort but Eden knew better that to show any act of defiance and simply accepted her remontrance. After this, Ilias dismissed her and the rest of the host of angels and in short order she was left alone with the two young girls.

"Now, I wish to offer you an apology for the unbecoming behavior of my underlings. Eden had always been quick to judge others despite my attempt to teach her temperance. I hope you will find it in yourself to forgive her one day", declared Ilias as she was the incarnation of humility itself.

The two girls seemed quite surprised of her behavior and shared a glance before the Shiratsuyu girl first spoke.

"Yeah... Well to be fair we are kinda to blame too." she said as she scratched the back of her head in embarassement "We didn't meant to barge in your place like this. It's just that when we reached the top of that mountain we were attacked by some strange beast with wings and then we stumbled on that door lady and ended in a fight." She then explained.  
"Anyway ! We apologize too for the problems we caused, we were supposed to keep our head out of trouble too." She ended even as the end of her sentence morphed into a whining.

"We won't hold any grudge against you for an honest mistake." Answered the goddess. "Now I think it is time that I present myself. I am Ilias, goddess of Light, creator of the universe and protector of mankind. I have already gathered that your names were Shiratsuyu and Murasame. I must confess it is the first time that I meet peoples I know Nothing about. An odd experience but a refreshing one."

"What do you mean ?" quickly asked Murasame.

"As a goddess I know the name and the face of every man, woman and children living on th earth. However I know nothing of you which is why I must ask you of who you are, and what you are." Said Ilias with an inquiring gaze that sent chills to the spine of the two girls.

"We... We are naval personnels. We belong to the Japanese Navy. I can't really say anymore than that without the consent of my superiors" déclared hesitantly Shiratsuyu.

At this moment Ilias took an instant to think about those words. "Naval personnel". Even if the words were unfamiliar, Ilias quickly deduced that those girls were some kind of soldiers that were versed in naval warfare.  
While she didn't detect any lies in their sayings, the goddess knew no navy which used young girls geared like them. However, if they were part of a military organisation, it meant that they were probably more of them and since they were from a navy, they had to be situated near the seaside.

Quickly, Ilias gaze fell on the surface of the earth, Following the coast lines.  
In an effort of efficiency, she quickly discarded the shores of Hellgondo as she doubted anyone could settle on the rocky cliffs of the accursed continent of Monsters.  
She first began scrying along the coast of Ilias Continent because the landmass named after her like nearly anything that was on it, was the smallest of the landmasses and didn't have much habitable shores. However, after swiftly sweeping the coastline, she found nothing out of place.  
So she moved her gaze north, toward Sentora, expecting to review a vast area before finding what she looked for. She began with Port Natatia, the distateful mermaid den and moved east, following the sandy beaches on several kilometers. Then, to her surprise, she suddently found it.

The installation wasn't what she expected. It was the size of a small coastal settlement with most of the buildings made of stone instead of wood. From her aerial glance, she couldn't phantom the use of most of their facilities with only the familiar sight of docks assuring her she was indeed looking at an naval base.  
She didn't loiter on the look of the buildings long. Instead, she quickly looked at the people roaming between them, moving with purpose. The goddess was quite surprised to find that a great number of young girls and women among them. Some of them had similar metal contraption that the ones who intruded her realm while others were free of them. She also remarqued the variety of clothing that these maidens wore with a lot of different types and color paterns. The only real uniformity was that nearly everyone wore short skirts.  
However those who dwelled in this settlement were not only girls. There were also some men in some kind of uniforms, she guessed. Most of them seemed to be relegated to menial task and logistics as they carried huges crates, drove strange carriages and seemed to write down the inventory of what they possessed.  
Yet, young maidens and men alike, their number was dwarfed by that of the minuscule creatures that she seen manning the weapons on both Shiratsuyu and Murasame riggings. Their presence was easily unoticable for their small size maked them nearly invisible to anyone who wasn't paying attention. However Ilias was paying attention and her divine gaze was having difficulties to track the numerous little things that walked, trotted, runned on the ground, on the roofs, entering the buildings by the doors, the windows and even cracks on the walls. Their clothing was even more varied than that of the girls and these differecies seemed to imply their own roles and tasks.  
More intriguing, Ilias discovered that an oddly high proportion of them seemed to be linked with the girls. Most of those wore white uniforms with white little caps. They climbed and moved on the maidens bodies without caring of their host movements, entering and exiting the metal riggings strapped on the girls with specifics tasks in minds like carrrying crates and even tidying the weapons.

Ilias could have stayed longer to try to unravel all the secrets of these strangers but even if her mind worked faster than the other beings, it didn't meant that the time actually stopped and she had still the two girls in front of her waiting for her to speak.

However she still had the time to learn what she needed to know to sort this situation. By the look of this, it was obvious to her that these people were not from her world. The girls and small creatures that haunted them were beings which didn't even exist in her world and she didn't recognize any of the men working with them despite them being humans.

The most logical conclusion was that these foreigners were from an alternate dimension or an entire other universe. And the thought was worrying to say the least. While even as an all-mighty goddess there was things that even her wasn't keen to do such as messing with time-space and dimensions. To Ilias and to the world, the presence of these people were akin to an foreign organism in the body and like in an organic body, the consequences of their mere presence could as well be benign or catastrophic to the fabric of the universe itself.  
And it wasn't even considering the potential disruption they could cause to her plans. She spent many centuries slowly moving pieces and after some setbacks, the conditions to her final victory were already nearing completion.  
Truly, Ilias considered wiping them out from existence. It was the most prudent solution, for the safety of her plans and for the world. And it would also wipe away to embarassment to have let such occurrence slip her monitoring.

However Ilias actually pondered the question. From what she gathered, this strange girls were siding with humans. Maybe not her humans but they were humans altogether. It did mean that it was only a matter of time before these foreigners were exposed to the dangers this world offered to humans. And at that moment, they will have to choose to crawl to the ground in fright or face it with courage and rightful retribution. If the actions of the two girls who broke into heavens were of any indications, the goddess had no doubt that they would make the right choice.  
And at that moment, Ilias would have made a new set of allies.  
_Powerful allies_, she thought as she looked at the still smoking entrance of heavens.

"Then you must be part of the denizens dwelling on this strange settlement which appeared on the shores of Sentora not long ago", declared Ilias like she knew of their presence for a long time. Both girls flinched at her statement, assuring her that she was right in her assomption. "I must confess that this occurrence is unprecedented. I would like to be enlighted to the reasons of your presence in this world but I understand that you are willing to keep your secrets".

"Sorry about that", meekly apologized the Shiratsuyu girl while her companion silently bowed slightly like those people in Yamatai.

"Worry not. I am the goddess of light and Good. My comprehension is only matched by my mercifulness and so I understand that you trespassed into heavens without any bad intent", Ilias nodded with a gentle smile. "For this reason I pardon you and will let you leave safely", she Added while extending an hand to the entrance of heavens.  
"Also know that my mercy know no bounds. As such I am willing to help any lost lambs, be they come from this world or not", she finally said, radiating with benevolence.

"Tha-thank you ! Then we will be leaving", exclaimed Shiratsuyu, probably not expecting to be let off easily after all the damages she did.

"We will be sure to tell this to the admiral", added Murasame with another little bow, obviously more composed than her companion.

Ilias watched as they both silently exited heavens. Fortunatly, she sensed that while badly damaged and out of cold, Heaven's Gate has not be destroyed. It saved her the trouble to fuse the entrance of her realm with another angel.

After a while, Eden came to her again. She was obviously worried that she discontented her inadvertantly and as a result was so meek that Ilias found her almost cute. The thought of admonishing her to have taken such initiative without her explicit consent briefly flashed in her mind but she didn't act on it. Eden didn't do anything wrong and only the circonstances made her decision a rash and poor choice. Had it be anyone on else such as a monster or a human penetrating her holy realm, Ilias would have approuved their removal.

"If these people were to return again, what should we do ?", asked hesitantly the seraph.

"Let them in and treat them well. Their appareance was unexpected but they actually might be useful to my plans", responded the goddess, her tone much less gentle than before.

"May I ask in which way ?", requested Eden, obviously not convinced.

"In due time", bluntly answered Ilias as she looked upon the earth again. She saw the two girls begining their descent of the mountain along the path. Around them the landscape was ruined with still smoking deep craters, unrooted trees and destroyed columns.

A nasty smile crept on the Goddess of Light face. If the played her cards well, the Monster Lord will not know what will fall upon her.

**A/N :**

**Sorry for the wait, exams got in the way and I had some problems with writer block. Also I was confronted to my own lack of vocaulary in English. Any way, dispite all that, I produced the longest chapter so far.  
**

**Now I will answer some of the reviews :**

**Guest : First thank you again to your interesting reviews. About the advanced techs in MGQ, I will only displays those of the original trilogy. So no secret laboratory in San Ilia. However there is still one peculiar character who distribute her advanced techs to various persons and I don't plan to remove it so there will still be advanced techs. However this technology is restricted to certain circles and don't seem affect MGQ societies which remains roughtly late medievalish.  
As for the interactions between main characters of the two series, I plan to include them, I just wait for opportunities. Like you probably seen, I try to associates characters that interact with each other in a special way. For example I first set Shiratsuyu and Eden together because they both have an obsession with being "First".  
**

**THE GREAT AARON : Thank you.**

**I took a little bit of time to write this chapter but this fic is not dead yet. I have ideas for at least half a dozen chapters. Thank you for reading and following. Tell me what you think about this story.**

**See you for the next episode !**


	7. Heavenly Dragon Fight

Extreme heat and the rumbling of the earth was what greeted the lone figure approaching the entrance of Gold Volcano. Above, from the top of the burning mountain, a never ending flow of lava was flowing to the sides. Every now and then, a loud roar was heard, originating from the heart of the mount, and as if it was answering, the earth shook like a grumbling sleeper.

At the feet of this apocalyptic scenery, a lone young woman was staring. She had short purple hairs and one visible yellow eye. The other was hidden behind a purple eyepatch while two strange black metal devices were connected to the two sides of her head. She wore a black sweater with a black tie at her neck above a white shirt. A big array of metal rigging was stapped on her back while two single barreled turrets were on her sides. Below she was dressed by a short black skirt and two thighhighs of the same color. Two metal boots of alien design and a black scabbard at her left hip were the final touch of her appearance.

While admiring the fury of the burning mountain, a new explosion at the top sent flying flaming rocks at the ground below. One of the projectiles crashed just a few meters of the figure of the young woman who, instead of backing away, instead grinned from ear to ear.  
She really didn't regret her decision to split up with the rest of her task force.

A few hours ago, Tenryuu was leading a small reconaissance force sent by the admiral to the north of the central continent. The mission wasn't meant to be difficult in the light cruiser mind : go north, cross the wastelands and poisoned marshs which were composing this lands, carry distant observation of localized settlements, note anything of importance and avoid trouble.  
Had she been on sea, the young woman would have called it an ordinary mission. She had in the past, leaded a fair number of recon operations.

However, the current situation made her especially motivated. First, she had to keep her mind occupied. Since the base got somehow displaced in another universe, or what else, the situation at the base was to say the least, quite tense. Members kept themselves occupied so to not have to face all those uncertainties plaguing everyone's minds.  
Second, she also had to take care of the destroyers she cared about who were facing the same distress that the rest of the base. Not that she disliked other destroyers but like everyone, she still had her favorites she wouldn't let down.  
And third, she was bored as hell and needed some action.

That was why she immediatly accepted the mission though she didn't expect much in term of stimulation. The only real action she really got was when they were briefly chased by those crazy women monster-things. The environment was uncomfortable and dull and they didn't found anything really interesting.  
At least until they spotted black smoke on the horizon. When they came sufficiently close to spot the volcano, Tenryuu knew she had to get a closer look. Fortunatly for her, the destroyers and her fellow light cruiser knew her well and she didn't have to say anything. The others would continue on their way and Tenryuu would catch up really soon.

A new tremor shook the earth and the volcano roared once again. A shudder parcoured the young woman body. The red lava flowing like burning blood rivers on black rocks, the smell of smoke and ash, the rumbling, the heat, the roar !

"_It is so damn cool !_"

Tenryuu couldn't help but feel excited. As a warship, she felt at home in this kind of setting and the novelty of being on land and in front of a volcano made her elated. And it wasn't all !  
When she came close, she spotted what looked like a huge cavern leading to the heart of the mountain, like the entrance to hell itself. The light cruiser knew she had a mission to accomplish and needed to meet again with her companions soon but the prospect of entering inside the volcano was too enticing.

"_Sorry Admiral, sorry girls !_" she offered a small prayer of forgiveness before heading to the cave.

The young woman walked toward her objective at a precipitated pace. She quickly crossed the distance and was but mere meters from the entrance but suddently she froze. The excited smile ardoring her face washed away as her eyes narrowed while her muscules stiffened.

Among the loud noises of the fire and earth of this apocalyptic atmosphere, the distinct sound of armored steps echoed in Tenryuu ears. Those were coming from inside the cave and sure enough, in a small amount of time, an armored figure emerged from it.

She was of average height, not taller than the light cruiser herself. She wore black armor with golden lining protecting her torso and shoulders. On her head, in front of her short red hairs, was a metal circlet of the same colors than her armor. A purple cape was strapped on her shoulders and covered her back while a massive sheath was held on her left hip. More striking for Tenryuu however, were the exposed skin of her body which was made of green and pale yellow scales and the golden, determined gaze she was ardorning.

The scaly woman stopped a few meters in front of Tenryuu, her stare scanning her entire body as if appraising her worth. Meanwhile, the light cruiser did the same and recognised the bearing of a strong warrior in the person facing her. She had orders to avoid unecessary confrontations against this land denizens but fortunally, this one didn't seem to want to attack her on sight.

"A human, huh. A pretty rare sight in this place. Few are brave or strong enough to manage to get close to the volcano", finally said the unknown warrior.

"I can hold my own", answered Tenryuu with a cheeky smile.

The inhuman warrior snorted with approval and dismiss at the same time. It quite annoyed the light cruiser that she was being looked down but she kept her big mouth shut... for now.

"Why did you come here ? You were not considering entering the mountain, I hope", questionned again the scaly woman.

"And what if I did, huh ?" grinned the light cruiser.

"I would call you foolish. You did well to come here but a mere human would just die inside. Be it to the hand of the monsters or from the heat itself", sighed the warrior. Tenryuu felt a little vein throbbing on temple. This creature really thought she was an idiot it seemed.

"Yeah, thank ya for the warning", she said, ignoring her warning, as she resumed her way to the entrance, intending to get past the scaly woman. However, as she was about to do it, the creature barred her way by raising her left arm in front of her.

"You won't get in", she deadpanned said, eyes narrowed.

Now that really got Tenryuu pissed of. The young light cruiser turned her own narrowed gaze to the warrior, trying to intimidate her. Had she got any success in her atempt, she would have asked if the was scared but the woman in front of her didn't even flinch.

"Why can't I get in ? What is your concern if I'm running into troubles, huh ? I'm still free to go wherever I want and it doesn't look like someone if owning the damn mountain !" growled the light cruiser, utterly pissed.

"The way your throwing you life away is not of my concern. However I would inform you that this volcano is indeed owned by someone. She does offers free pass to warriors she deem worthy to receive her teaching. However strong enough you're not and I am more than willing to avoid my benefactor the trouble of your disturbance".

The throbbing on Tenryuu temple went up by tenfold. Pent up anger frustration clouded her vision and she was very close to see red. Despite that, she stayed her hand and her sword stayed in her scabbard. However her tongue was on the loose.

"Now ya listen to me lizard girl ! Ya know nothing of what I'm able to do with that pretty sharp thing on my hip so your crappy assessment you can fuck it in your ass !"

The inhuman warrior seemed pretty surprised by her outburst and that brought some satisfaction to the light cruiser that recomposed herself to grinned cheekily at her. However, the armored woman quickly recovered and her eyes narrowed in visible irritation.

"Watch your tongue _girl._ You don't know who you are talking to. I am Granberia, one of the four Heavenly Knights serving the Monster Lord herself and member of the proud and mighty dragon race !" she exclamed pridefuly.

While she probably expected horrified realisation and awe from the light cruiser, Granberia was instead greeted by an oddly stunned look on the young woman face. Any apparent anger and frustration on Tenryuu face was gone as she froze.

"Pfft".

At first Granberia didn't know what to do of the next reaction of the purple haired woman. After a short while of silence, she suddently brought a hand to her mouth and obviously tried to repress an incontrollable giggling, as if the dragonkind said a hilarous joke.  
And indeed Tenryuu was trying to not to laugh her ass off. The sheer irony of the situation actually broke any kind of coherent thought she could muster. To think that this Granberia woman was a "Heavenly Dragon" amused Tenryuu to no end and the fact that she probably didn't know why made is even more funny.

"Is it anything funny about what I said ?" asked Granberia with a dangerous tone in her voice, obviously pissed to be mocked. However, even the rising tension was not enough to make Tenryuu regain her bearing. "You complained earlier of my assessment of your combat skills", then added the dragonkin as she drawed a massive sword from her sheath. "Then let me evaluated you myself, here and now".

That actually made Tenryuu regain her bearing.

"Oi, Oi, wait a minute !" exclamed Tenryuu as Granberia closed on her with a sword in hand.

"What is it ? Are you having cold feet now after mocking me ?" asked the dragon warrior.

"That's not it ! I have orders ! Orders ! I'm not supposed to get into troubles !" answered a panicking Tenryuu as she backed away.

"Hmmf, you should have thought about that sooner !"

In one quick move, Granberia closed the distance and fell her sword on the young woman but the blow wasn't meant to harm. It was slow and easily avoidable and parrable. She only did it to force her opponent to draw her weapon.  
And draw she did as sparks went flying as the large sword was deflected by the black and purple blade of the light cruiser.

"Sheesh... I don't have a choice I guess", sighed Tenryuu. However she didn't look displeased. After all, she finally got the action she seeked. She would probably be yelled at and get some form of punishement but at the moment she could hardly care as blood pumped hotly in her veins.

"I'm Tenryuu. Come at me if ya aren't scared !" declared pridefully the light cruiser.

Granberia didn't need to be asked twice as she charged directly at her guarding opponent. She knew that she would easily overmatch her in every field without even relying on her special moves. However, even if she planned to hold back, she fully intended to teach a lesson to the rude girl in front of her.  
The massive steel sword of the dragon girl went down on the form of her opponent but was immediatly intercepted by the other sword and deflected to the side in one smooth motion. Immediatly, the dark blade of Tenryuu shifted to a blow aimed directly at the exposed neck. Granberia took a step back to stay out of reach and brought back her sword with more force and speed than her previous blow. This time, it was Tenryuu turn to evade but even then, she immediatly went back on the offensive.

Both sword locked against each others and both warriors pushed, fully expecting to overcome the other with brute strength. But to their mutual surprise, neither of them broke as expected.  
Tenryuu could not believe it. Her blow had the equivalent of 51000 shaft horse power behind them, the same might that powered her engine and made her four thousand tons old hull drift on the ocean in her previous life. How could her opponent match the strenght of a warship ?  
Unbeknown to her, Granberia had similiar thoughts. She was a member of the might dragon race, with enough raw power to break bones as it were twigs. She was known as the best swordman currently living. She was able to overcome her master and went toe to toe with the current Monster Lord in term of raw power and fighting skills. How could a mere human sustain her blow as she put increasingly more power into them.

Despite their disbelieving states, both opponent recomposed each others and unwilling to give any ground, they put even more strenght into their push, making the black rock beneath their feets crack from the pressure. However this stalemate wasn't meant to last and one of them was soon overpowered by the other.  
As she felt the strain on her arms begining to be unbearable like she was facing a battleship, Tenryuu, with gritted teeth, broke the engagement by sliding her sword to the side while moving away from the now free weapon of her adversary. Planting a firm foot on the battered ground, she launched a side attack at Granberia.

Again, the large sword intercepted the black one with surprising speed. Unwilling to lose on the speed and dexterity departement, Tenryuu immediatly repeated her assault, hoping her relentlessness would overcome the dragon warrior.  
The clash of blades made sparks flying everywhere around them from the multiple angles of the attacks. Their movements was now a blur and the sceams of the metal was like joined in their fury by the roars of the burning mountain.

Suddently, Granberia managed to break Tenryuu momentum by parying a new blow and went herself on the offensive. From the aggressive and hectic style of the light cruiser came the mighty and controlled dance of the dragon. Each blows of Granberia was straightfoward, precisely aimed and powered in contrast of the vicious and unpredictable attacks of Tenryuu. That didn't mean it was not effective as the light cruiser quickly realised. Even if she could read her opponent movements, with her superior strenght and now superior speed, she couldn't afford to block or deviate any blows and evading them was begining to be increasingly difficult. Quickly the one eyed woman was forced further back. Her overloaded mind couldn't think of any way of regaining the initiative with her sword, not that her opponent did leave her enough time to ponder about it.

Another mighty blow came to her with such a speed that Tenryuu was forced to block. The force of the hit was sufficient to sent her flying a few meters but luckily she managed to land on her feets and get some space however her arms felt sore.  
The light cruiser just had the time to breath once before Granberia was already upon her, her sword in striking stance over her head. Tenryuu saw an opportunity and propulsed herself right into the dragon warrior guard. Her arms went on the move, launching a powerful slash blow from the right side. Unfortunaly Granberia immediatly reacted. With her own powerful movement, she shifted her attack and brought down her the pommel of her sword with considerable strenght right on the head of her opponent, making her crash on the ground at her feet.

A massive headache, a sharp ring to her ears and the feeling of liquid dripping from her forehead was all that the light cruiser could feel at the moment. Her blurry vision cleared to see the reptilian feet of her opponent just before her. Slowly, she looked up to see the stoic face of Granberia who stared back. Her annoyance seemed to be gone and she was gazing at her as if she apraised her once more.  
Her mind now cleared, the young woman finally realised her situation. At this position, she was now at the mercy of the opposing warrior.

"Heh. Looks like I lost.", scoffed Tenryuu with self derision.

"Indeed", answered Granberia. "However I must compliment your strength and skills. It was not something that I expected from a mere human", she added though the last bit held an accusatory tone that the light cruiser catched up.

Tenryuu tentativaly tried to get up. To her mild surprise, her opponent let her do so and while they still both held their swords in their hands, neither of them assumed any hostile stance.  
While understandably pissed at her defeat, the light cruiser was not foolish enough to try her luck again. This brief bout against the dragon warrior told her that she was not an opponent that she could easily defeat. It was a shame that she couldn't enjoy the cool atmosphere around her but she knew better that endangering herself and her mission for something trivial.

"So... Since I lost, I guess I'll give up to my little exploration project. Beggars can't be choosers so I'll probably go back from when I came from", said the light cruiser as she began to turn around.

But as she was about to take a step away, a strong scaly hand catched firmly her shoulder. The young woman didn't flinch and merely tilted her head to make eye contact with the dragon warrior.

"Unfortunaly, I fear I can't let you go that easily. Humans are not supposed to be as strong as you and while I'm more than happy to have powerful contenders, leaving you alone would probably hinder the Monster Lord plans in the long run. Now, you said earlier you were following orders from someone. Can you tell me more about it ?"

_"Me and my damn big mouth_", cried internally Tenryuu. To say that she was in deep troubles was more than a understatement. However she couldn't let herself be captured.

In a instant, her midly relaxed stance tensed and with every bit of speed she could muster, the light cruiser slashed at the dragon warrior. Granberia reacted immediatly and easily evaded the blow. However le light cruiser didn't hope to hit and as the scaly hand realeased her shoulder she quickly went on a dash to get as far away from her opponent that possible.

Tenryuu internally cursed. Now that the lust for battle and some of her accumulated frustration was dissipated, she finally understand how much she fucked up. She had disobeyed orders and might get captured by an unknown party. If the dragon warrior suceeded in this last endeavor, it may put the whole naval base in danger.  
In a short while, Tenryuu managed to clear a great distance with her speed but despite how quick her feet were hammering the ground, she could already feel Granberia closing the distance. The dragon girl was both stronger and faster than her. She was also more skilled with a sword. If she didn't to anything, she would soon be stuck in a losing fight against her superior opponent. But that was not big news for Tenryuu. Even in her previous life, she always was at the bottom of the pool. A design old of nearly thirty years when the war broke out. Even most of the first line destroyers were theorically stronger than her. But it didn't mean that she could do nothing. Even then she managed to achieve victory and beat an opponent way above her class. All that mattered was getting the right circumstances.  
The light cruiser clenched her teeth. It's looked like her fair duel was over since the stakes at play changed. It was not about winning a fight anymore but using everything at her disposal to prevent her capture. It became an actual battle.

Granberia quickly approached the retreating form of the young woman. She understood her relutance to capture but she still had a duty to uphold to the Monster Lord which was consisting of more than merely following orders. If an unknown entity or any of the human kingdoms were disposing of strong warrior of this girl caliber, as a Heavenly knight, she had to report it to her liege.  
With a leap, the dragon warrior finally closed the distance with her objective. The young woman instinct must have been top notch because she immedialy evaded her grip by leaning to she side and following by a slash at her. Granberia used her superior speed to block the attack and immediatly followed with her own. Now that she managed to hold her in a bout, she just had to beat her again to finally accomplish her objective.  
However, as their fight began anew, she felt that something was very different. Instead of wearing a grin screaming battle lust and excitement, her opponent face was fully focused and her gaze more alert. Her attacks were more prudents while her defense was way fiercer.  
Granberia went from numerous angles, her blade striking at her in such a way to avoid lethal hit while aiming to incapcitate her. But the situation was tricky. There was a large difference in skills between them but it was not so large that she could handle her how she wanted. Moreover, the light cruiser seemed to react better to her attacks.

As another swing from her steel sword was deflected, Granberia decided to try something new. She hated to use the handicap of another but she wanted this fight over sooner than later.  
After a diversionary strike at her lower right side, the dragon warrior shifted her stance in one smooth motion and aimed another strike at her upper left side, where the eyepatch on her left eye offered her a blind spot.

However such a strike was long since anticipated by the light cruiser. She had wondered how long it would take for her opponent to exploit such apparant weakness. Tenryuu used this foresight to lean away from the blow and while slashing diagonally at the dragon. Granberia obviously didn't expect such a thing and while she managed to evade any damage to her unprotected parts, a long, thin scratch spawned on her black armor, fact that made her pause a moment.  
The unexpected break allowed Tenryuu to take a breath. She mentally thanked her observation fairies as they were her eyes not just on her left side but also on every angles around her body. The dragon girl probably didn't realised because of their size and the fact that her attention was brought to her body language and weapon, but everywhere on her body, in her body and on her rigging, minuscule sailors were now at their battle stations and merely waited any occasion to make themselves useful.

After recovering from the shock the sucessful counter-attack of her opponent, Granberia went on the offensive again, this time displaying more of her strength, speed and skills in order to overcome the young woman.  
After echanging another set of blow that disturbed the flow of the wind itself, Granberia managed to break Tenryuu guard but while she tried to follow with a decisive blow, the light cruiser barely managed to block her blade with the hilt of her sword. However, the strike itself was strong enough to send her strumbling back. When Granbaria was again over her, Tenryuu was on her four, not yet stabilized and in the impossibility to defend herself this time.

Granberia just had the time to see the barrel of a 7.7mm machine gun from the girl rigging on her back, aiming at her, before a flow of inumerable bullets was shot at her form. Her charge was quickly halted and in reaction to her surprise, she tried to block most of the bullets with the flat of her sword, while instinctually taking a step back.

This was the occasion Tenryuu had waited. With her opponent distracted by the never ending flow of bullets, the light cruiser gave an order to one of the fairies on her bridge and then turned around and began to retreat as quickly as possible.

The movement of the young woman body interupted the machine gun fire aimed at the dragon warrior as she wasn't in the line of sight anymore. However it took a little bit of time to Granberia to recover completely from the surprise attack. Most bullets had hit her armor and sword but a significant amount went past her defence and hit her unprotected limbs. However, apart from a slight ache, the monster swordwoman was uninjured. Her body was robust and dragon scales as thought than steel, it would take more to make her bleed.  
As soon as she recovered, Granberia gaze went back to the fleeing form of the young woman. She again covered a considerable distance but still not far enough as to escape. Still, the dragon warrior let a tired sigh out. She duel was enjoyable but she was growing tired to chase after her opponent.  
While the dragon warrior was about to pursue the light cruiser, a sudden and unknown sound came to her ears despite the racket of the volcanic scenery. It became like distant whistling but progressively seemed to get closer. Curious, Granberia looked at the sky clouded with black smoke and soon enough, she spotted a bright orange object falling toward her direction.

At the sound of the explosion behind her, Tenryuu shifted her sight though the eyes of one of her fairies monitoring her rear. She was quick enough to see the massive black cloud and debris that erupted and noted that it exploded really close to the dragon warrior.

"Transmit : Good hit. Demand continuous fire on the same position", said the warship to the fairy operating the radio on the bridge. The minuscule radioman immediatly complied and soon enough, after she saw the still standing figure of Granberia among the dissipating smoke, another shell went down at the same location.

Another hit on point. Tenryuu couldn't help but notice that the long range bombardement was probaly more accurate than anything she could do at the same distance.

"Oh my, it's not like you to praise me so much Tenryuu-chan", suddently came a teasing voice in her head.

"I didn't even say anything !", quickly shouted indignantly the light cruiser as she continued to run and another shell fell on her previous battlefield.

"Really ? Maybe because I know you so well that I am able to hear your throughts even at such a distance. After all, isn't it said that sisterly bonds are that strong ?", Tenryuu really wanted to ignore the teasing voice but she couldn't. Not after she asked her sister to come save her ass.

"It's only about twins ! And were not twins, you were constructed before me !", she hotly answered as another shell fell far away behind her.

"Ufufu. Is that so ? Are you going to call me Tatsuta onee-san from now on then ?"

"Like hell I would do that ! I'm the nameship of the class and that's all that matters ! Anyway, you should get moving now. That dragon girl seem to have shifted her attention to you. She will track the origin of you shots so stop firing and meet me at our designated rendez-vous", said Tenryuu as she saw the distant figure of Granberia getting away from the bombardement zone and going in the opposite direction from her at breakneck speed.

"As you wish. It's a shame though, my blade was excited to taste the blood of the person who managed to cause so much trouble to my dear sister. It's a good thing that I decided to stay close to you in case you inevitably ran into troubles."

Tenryuu briefly snorted but didn't say anything since the circumstances didn't speak in her favor. She would let Tatsuta have a fun for a little while as a thank for her help but as she finally seemed to have escaped immediat danger, another thought came to her mind. Since she and Tastuta were both roughtly at the same place, it did mean that the rest of her task force was her their own. And that kind of worried her.

"_I hope you're doing better than me kiddos_".

**A/N :**

**Again, sorry about the delay. After the exams came the homeworks so I was kept pretty busy for a while. However I hope this action filled chapter made up for the lateness.**

**First some replies to the reviews :**

**Guest : Thank you again for your continuous support. It is indeed Promestein that distribute techs in the MGQ universe. Since the San Ilia laboratories are related to the tartarus rifts in Paradox, it is logical that it does appear in this storie where the tartarus rifts doesn't exist.**

**THE GREAT AARON : Thank you.**

**MageTGM : She is planned to appear in a few chapters.**

**It's the first time I tried to write something combat related in english and it probably shows. I would appreciate your input on this matter.**

**If it wasn't clear enough, the reason Tenryuu was laughting at Granberia was because her name (Tenryuu) basically mean "Heavenly Dragon", which you can see, can easily be linked at Granberia being a dragon heavenly knight.**

**The next chapter will be closely related to this one and will be featuring the rest of Tenryuu task force. For those who knows Kantai Collection fandom well, you can probably guess which characters will appear. And for those who know the two universe, you can deduce what kind of setting will taking place next time.**

**Lastly I would like your input of the overall aspect of this fiction since it would help me to draws the path of where this storie goes. More specifically, I would like to ask what you like or dislike in this story. What are the strong points, what are the weak points. Your opinion really interest me and will probably help me to produce better chapters.**

**Thank you for reading, see you next time.**


	8. A lady's brunch

In the extreme north of Sentora continent, east of the great wastelands of the Gold region, beyong the arid and rocky hills, nature flourished again in a land which was apparently plagued by desolation. The first blades of grass could be seen sprouting in large number just after a large mountain pass which opened on a huge green field with lush forests on the horizon.

The winds there were playful while the rays of the sun was gentle and didn't burn the skin. The sounds of chirping and buzzing indicated the existence of a prosperous wildlife.

Deeper in this more hospitable lands, one could strumble across a prominent dirt road which led to the few settlements in the region and as if to assure it to any travellers, a small signboard was planted at one point to indicate the direction.

"Lady's village, 20 miles north-west", was inscribed on the wooden surface.

As soon as the small group of young looking girls read the indication, three of them immediatly shifted their gaze to the fourth. Like the others, this girl wore a white serafuku with a red tie, black collar and a black skirt. However she was the only one who wore pantyhose, as the three other girls prefered thighhighs, kneesocks or regular socks of black or dark blue color. She also wore a black navy hat with a white anchor drawn on it, trait that she shared with the girl next to her. Aside from clothes, she had dark purple hairs, slightly disheveled, which descended low on her back. Her overhall frame was small and looked quite delicate. She also possessed big purple eyes, currently widened and glued to the writings on the sign.

Hibiki silently sighed at the reaction of her elder sister. They looked so similar that aside from her bleached hairs and and icy blue hairs, they could pass as twins. However, personality wise, they could hardly be more different. Hibiki was the definition of calmness with an almost vacant attitude and a near constantly blank expression.  
On the other hand, her dark haired sister, Akatsuki, was quite vocal, with an comical would-be authoritative stance hiding an usual childish personality. She was often considered as very guilible and had indeed been fooled a fair number of time by teasing destroyers. But most notable of all, Akatsuki seemed to have an obsession with anything about being a "lady".

It was the reason why Hibiki, and her two sisters Ikazuchi and Inazuma, immediatly knew how the situation would evolve.

"This... this...", began the hesitant voice of Akatsuki, obviously trying to choose her next words carefully. "I think this case deserve an investigation !" she then declared.

At her words everyone loudly sighed. Since Tenryuu and then Tatsuta broke off from them for dubious reasons, the commandment came into the hands of Akatsuki who, despite her quirks, was used to leading the 6th Destroyer Division comprising her three sisters.  
But it didn't meant that they would quietly do anything she said.

"Akatsuki ! We currently are on a mission ! The commander is counting on us at the moment ! Now is not the time to be distracted by your stupid obsession !", argued Ikazuchi.

Akatsuki and Hibiki immediatly turned their gaze to their younger sister, the former with narrowed eyes, the later with her usual blank stare. Ikazuchi currently puffed her cheeks, accentuating the roundness her messy short brown hairs gave to her face. Her own light brown eyes were narrowed in a disaproving maner while her hands were balled and rested on her hips.  
Hibiki internally braced for another argument between the two. For a reason unknown to even herself, Akatsuki and Ikazuchi were often stuck in disputes every now and then, with the elder sister usually reproching the younger her lack of obediance to her as an elder and leading ship of the Akatsuki class while Ikazuchi criticized the inappropriate childish attitude of said nameship.  
Ikazuchi's admonitions would have been perfectly justified if she wasn't herself subject to her own quirks. Where Akatsuki was reknowned for her obsession with anything related to ladyness, Ikazuchi has a similar fixation about the fact of being dependable. She wasn't the only shipgirl trying to be of any use in the naval base, especially in the destroyers department, however the third ship of the Akatsuki class took it to the next level, to the point of sometimes doing too much.

"I- I am doing it for the sake of the mission, of course ! What are you insinuating ?", answered Akatsuki after being slightly taken aback. "We are currently on a recon mission so our duty is to gather informations ! Observing this settlement is well inside our attributions !", she finally countered.

"Oh yeah ? Then why didn't you insist so much on the other villages we've come across before ? We barely observed the last one, with the large potato fields, just yesterday !".

While the two destroyers bickered, Hibiki contented herself with observing them, not saying a thing like she always did. After all, the situation was nothing out of the ordinary and would soon resolve itself without anyone intervention, though whille briefly shifting her gaze to the fidgeting form of her last sister, she doubted that the argument would revolve just around those two.

"Awawa ! Please, stop fighting you two nanodesu !", finally cried the shy voice of Inazuma.

Despite her obvious lack of confidence, both of the arguing sisters immediatly stopped their fight to look at the small destroyer. Inazuma was by far one of the more timid and quiet shipgirls in the naval base that it came to a surprise to know that she was always paired with the social and energetic Ikazuchi. The demure girl shared with her direct elder sister the lack of hat of the two others and brown hairs. However her hairs were a shade lighter and unexpectedly long, fact that was hidden by the way she tied them at the top back of her head with a orange clip. Her light brown eyes usually had a gentle glint in them but at the moment they were widened and obviously panicking at the sight of her two sisters bickering.

"Sorry Inazuma", apologized Akatsuki and Ikazuchi at the same time as both knew how sensitive the youngest of them was to her fights. Ikazuchi in particular since she shared with her direct younger sister a pacifist attitude since they both disliked conflicts.

"_Khorosho_", muttered Hibiki in russian, glad that the argument was quickly put down. The white haired girl usually didn't interfere in the interaction with her siblings but she too disliked to see them bickering. But as always, she kept her mouth shut and her thoughts to herself. It wasn't her place to tell them what to do.

Finally, after a more quiet deliberation, the 6th Destroyer Division decided to follow Akatsuki idea, mostly because it would please her but also because it aligned with the objectives of their mission. So they followed the dirt road across vast green fields of dancing grass. Ikazuchi and Inazuma seemed to particuliary appreciate the trip as they admired the tranquil beauty of the nature there which contrasted greatly with the previous setting. Since none of them was really familiar with trips across the land before the displacement of the naval base, it made quite a novel and pleasant experience. It didn't prevent Akatsuki to complain about the dirt stuck on her shoes or the fact that "proper ladies should have a mode of transportation during travel".  
Thanks to their warship stamina, the 6th Destroyer Division travelled at a great pace. They didn't really fatigue much and didn't need any break. Even if it was bad manners for Akatsuki, they ate their lunch as they walked. She was far more concerned to arrive quickly at this lady's village.

And quickly arrive they did. Lady's Village was a small settlement of less than a hundred of houses. However those habitations were not simple wooden homes made of logs with roofs of thatch. All of them were made of fine white stone and elegent design. Between the houses, paved roads were borded by well trimed turf and trees. Everywhere spawned gardens of colorful flowers in which where tables and chairs of fine wood used to leasurely enjoy the afternoon sun.  
And in the middle of this setting of refinnement and good taste throne a manor of considerable dimension with numerous windows that glittered from the reflection of the daylight. It's masonry was of great finesse with carfully carved bricks. At the front, a small array of steps made of white stone leaded to an impressive oak door with a golden handle.

"Wow...", let escape Akatsuki, rightfully stunned by the architecture of the place. But she wasn't alone in that regard as even her less enthousiastic sisters seemed to be impressed at varying degrees.

However what truly attracted the gazes of the shipgirls were the inhabitants. Strolling leisurely on the roads, sat at the garden tables or in the finely trimmed grass itself, drinking tea or simply idly chatting with each others, were numerous women, all dressed in dazzling frilly dresses of incredibly good taste, some of them carrying delicate umbrelas to shield their delicate skin from the offending rays of the sun.

Hibiki briefly shifted her gaze to her elder sister and as expected, her eyes were wide open with stars in it. After all this place looked what was probably the more ressembling image of Paradise in her purple haired girl mind.

The white haired destroyer didn't really understand the interest of Akatsuki into ladies. To her, Akatsuki was already perfect as she was and actually looked more like a proper lady when she wasn't even trying to do so. It was a shame that her obsession was in fact breaking an otherwise admirable personality and behavior.  
Sometimes she wondered herself if she should talk to her about it. Tell her that her will to become a proper lady was unecessary, that she and her sisters liked her as she was. It would have saved some saliva and Akastuki's image.  
However, each time she crushed the thought. There was a reason for why Akatsuki wanted to be a "proper lady" so badly. It was the same reason most of the shipgirls have so much apparently inexplicable quirks. The same reason that told why Ikazuchi was obessessed by being depended on, why Inazuma's personality sometimes shifted around and why she behaved the way she was. It was something eminently personal and intimate that even sister-ships couldn't freely share with each others. Everyone realised this, even the admiral and it was the reason everyone was so tolerant about it even though they were a military force.

"Don't you think we are too, nanodesu ?" suddently came the worried voice of Inazuma.

At her words, three stares turned in her direction and after an instant, they all looked around them. It was true they were pretty close, despite being hidden belong a small group of trees of bushes. Akatsuki had argued that they should be as close as possible to amass an increased amount of informations. At that, Ikazuchi countered that it was unecessary to get that close to the village. After all they were still warships in the end and as such they were used to fight at sea against foes several kilometers away. The case nearly broke into another argument but the panicking face of Inazuma was enough to differ the situation.  
In the end, they went closer than expected but it wouldn't have posed any problems. Their presence was not expected so noone was on the lookout for them and their small frame was easily concealable.

"It's fine, don't worry Inazuma. Even if we are discovered we can still flee in a moment", reassured Ikazuchi with her usual enthousiasm.

"And it is unlikely that we even get spotted. We're 500m away from the nearest house. No human can see clearly that far", added Akatsuki with a confident tone while Ikazuchi nodded.

"Ara ? But you're still under the wind, young ladies. Anyone could be able to capt your smell in this situation".

All four destroyers immediatly froze at the sound of an unknown female voice behind them. However, the next second, instinct nurtured by numerous battles made them immediatly turn to face the origine of the voice.  
At the same moment, a neaby bush was pushed aside to reveal the form of a tall woman, one with black hairs flowing below a large light purple hat with a dark purple flower on it. She wore a long and expensive looking dress and gloves of the same color than her hat while her clothes revealed her bare shoulders and stopped short of showing cleavage. In her hand, she held a light purple umbrela that she carried above her shoulder.

"Oh my, may I have scared you per chance ? If that is the case, please accept my apologies", said the woman with a kind smile.

The destroyers stayed silent, their stance ready to move at a moment notice. However, after the woman idly showed her hands to show that didn't mean any harms, the destroyers relaxed a bit.

"How did you spot us ?", briefly asked Hibiki with her usual flat tone, even if her slightly narrowed eyes betrayed suspicion.

"Oh, I did answer to your question, no ? You see, I was peacefuly strolling into the woods like I usually do, and per chance I notice quite an unusual scent", the woman answered.

"You smelled us ?!", nearly cried Akatsuki, wondering if she stinked that much after a long trip without proper bathing.

"Indeed. You see, I do have a quite good sense of smell".

The answer did placate a little the destroyers worries about the corporal odor departement. And for Hibiki, it explained how she managed to pinpoint their position without them being in her line of sight, otherwise their lookout fairies would have spotted the woman first.

"Tell me, what four cute little girls are doing, crouching in the woods outside of our village ? I have never seen you in our little community, are you perhaps lost ?", asked the woman with a tinte of concern.

The four destroyers looked at each other before answering, as if to silently deliberate. However, as the currently flagship, it came to Akatsuki to decide what to do.

"We are not lost", answered the purple haired girl. "We are currently travelling and just made a brief break. However, we are fully rested now so we will be resuming our travel".

Akastuki discretly gulped her saliva. The thought of having a real lady abording her might have, in a different situation, elated her but the fact that she was a step away from failing her mission just because of her stupid obsession upsetted her far more. The situation might have been a once in a life time chance for her to learn more about being a proper lady, be she was first of all a warship, a destroyer of the Japanese Navy, a big sister and she flagship of their task force, she couldn't fail her siblings nor Tenryuu nor her admiral.

Having understood the intent of their eldest sister, Hibiki, Ikazuchi and Inazuma, immediatly prepared to depart. They all hoped that this little miscalculation would not get them into trouble with their superior.

However, as they were about to leave, the voice of the lady standing behind them made them stop.

"Ara ? Why are you so hurry ? Surely you must feel tired and hungry after all this march. And those things you are carrying on your back seems so heavy. Why don't you all join me at my house ? I would be delighted to share some tea and delicacies with such fine little ladies".

Hibiki shot a midly concerned look at the back of Akatsuki. Without knowing, this woman was pushing all the buttons necessary to convince the purple haired girl to join her. Her elder sister seemed to take it upon herself to resist to the tentation but it certainly was enough to made her pause.  
A low rumbling suddently came to her ears, followed by three others. She turned her gaze to look a the slighty embarassed face of Ikazuchi and deep crimson one of Inazuma to confirm that it wasn't only her stomach which complained to her. She didn't need to look at Akatsuki to know that she was in a similar state.  
It wasn't like they lacked food since they still had a fair amount of rations hidden in their riggings but since the displacement of the base, the military staff decided to limit the quantity and quality of food that were distributed between shipgirls. Later model destroyers like the Akizuki class didn't seem to be affected since they were used to it since the Pacific War. Hibiki too was still somewhat used to it but her stomach also remembered the taste of proper food at the same time.

Now that all her sisters seemed conflicted, the stoic white haired girl decided to voice her opinion. She silently asked her radio fairy to transmit a message to all of her sisters.

"I guess that if our interactions are limited and we don't reveal our identities and allegiance to the naval base, we should be fine", she radioed.

"But...", began unsurely Inazuma by radio before hesitating to continue.

"That would be against orders", added Akatsuki with a firm voice through the radio, having apparently recovered her bearing.

"Don't worry. If we exploite the situation correctly, the result would be beneficial to the high command and as such, we should not be punished", answered Hibiki with her usual cool voice.

"What do you mean ?", asked Ikazuchi.

"By entereing the settlement and conversing with one of its inhabitants, we could gather a substancial amount of informations, more than we could by just observing from afar".

"Oooh, I see ! Good idea, Hibiki ! It really shows that you're the more experienced among us", exclaimed enthusiastically Ikazuchi.

Hibiki silently wince at her sister compliment. Stating that she was the more experienced among them didn't made her happy at all.

Despite Inazuma and, surprisingly, Akatsuki reservations, all four finally decided to comply to the white haired destroyer's plan.  
The woman seemed positively delighted to hear their answer. Was she longing for company that much, thought the girls. The finely dressed lady then lead them to the village proper.  
The destroyers quickly realised how much they attracted attention. As they moved through the streets, all women they crossed watched them with seemingly envying gazes, sometimes commenting on how cute they looked. For Hibiki, the situation was quite incomfortable but Ikazuchi didn't seem to mind as she happily greeted everyone. Inazuma was predictably reduced to a blushing mess as she wasn't good with neither too much attention, nor compliments. Akatsuki looked quite tense at first but with how much she was called a "fine lady" in those few minutes, she quickly lowered her guard and looked positively elated.

After a short time, the small group of destroyers, led by the light purple dressed lady reached the sill of a charming house in impeccable conditions. The woman briefly smiled at them before grabing the handle. However, as she was about to open the door, another woman approached.

The newcomer was tall for a human and had quite an imposing figure. It was mainly due to the ampleness of classic black and white maid clothes with descended low, even hiding her feet, with a frilly white headress. She hard rather short dark blue hairs and eyes of the same color and arbored a tranquil expression.

When the light purple lady noticed her presence, she immediatly froze for some reason but quickly regained her bearing and smile gracefully at her.

"Greetings, miss Ran. Can I help you with something ?", she asked with a quicker tone than usual.

"Yes, indeed madam. My master was informed of the presence of your fine guests and wished invite them for lunch", gently spoke the maid.

The finely dressed woman seemed displeased at that. She stayed silent for a moment and as she was about to say something, the maid cut her.

"I must insist that my master is very adamant on the matter", the maid said, which apparently made the lady retract what she was about to say. "However, I suppose my master would be willing to extend her invitation to you. You know how much she fancy having guests during her lunches", she added with a mode pronounced smile.

Hibiki noted that the lady seemed to feel fairly displeased but also spotted something else in her eyes. Was it fear ? She didn't know. She wasn't really good at reading people.

In all cases, the lady quickly conceded and prompted the small group to follow the maid to her employer, stating that she would be able to offer them a far better reception than her.  
The destroyers didn't really have time to ponder the changement of situation and decided to follow the flow of the events. They accompagned silently the maid deeper inside the village. However, the stares that the other denizens of the village noticably changed toward them. No longer they were seemingly lingering and instead quickly losed interest when they saw who was leading them.

Even if her mind was still mostly in her "lady mode", Akatsuki noticed the change. It striked her as odd but didn't know what to make of it. It was obvious that they would meet someone higher in the social ladder of the community. It could be a double edged sword in their case because it was disturbing that such a person took notice of them and at the them time, they could probably gather more information with this higher value source.  
She quickly glanced at her sisters. Hibiki seemed nonplussed, Ikazuchi didn't seem to mind the change and Inazuma was even more nervous than usual. She mentally apologized to her youngest sister as she decided to take the risk and meet the person in charge.

After a short while, the destroyers arrived at destination. As they expected, they stopped in front of the biggest mansion, the manor they spotted when they were outside of the village. The maid smile to them as she saw them look up toward the higher floors of the huge house and then opened the large oak door, inviting them inside.

The interior of the mansion was even more luxurious that the exterior. Expensive looking beige carpets drapped the floor while light blue tapestries covered the walls which were arrayed of numerous paintings of breathtaking sceneries and still lifes.

"This way please", indicated the maid as she continued through the corridor.

The sixth destroyer division followed while marveling at the setting. Obviously Akatsuki was the most affected and spent her time having her gaze wander all around instead of looking before her. Inazuma, which was nervously stare at her eldest sister, fearing she hits a wall or strumble on the floor by accident, silently thanked Akatsuki fairies which were probably the ones conducting the walk of their host.

After walking through a long corridor, the maid leaded them to a vast dinning room. At the center was a huge and sturdy looking wooden table surrounded by massives chairs with several flower pots on it while above their heads, on the ceiling was a magnificent silver chandelier which was brightly shining, reflecting the light of the rays of the suns coming from the large windows.

The polite maid invited them to take seat on the chairs while waiting the arrival of her master and then disappeared, probably in the kitchen.

After unequiping their gear, which they put in a corner of the room, the four destroyers, to varying degrees, had troubles feeling at ease in this setting where they hardly fits. Every things seemed so grand, to start with the chairs they were sitting on, which didn't let them have their feet touch the ground. The disturbance was so unsettling that they began to have second thoughts about their idea.

"It-it is not too late to escape, nanodesu", tried Inazuma.

"That would be really rude to go now that we accepted the invitation", countered Akatsuki be even she was hesitant.

"Don't worry Inazuma, everything will be alright. After all, what could go wrong ?", rassured Ikazuchi.

"A fair number of things", flatly added Hibiki, without apparent concern.

"Mou, Hibiki ! Don't you I'm trying to think positively ? And it was you who suggested we take this course of actions", pouted Ikazuchi.

"Indeed. If anything go wrong, I will take the responsability", the white haired destroyer simply answered.

Akatsuki let out a loud sigh at her little sisters words.

"We've all agreed to follow Hibiki idea and I would be an hypocrite if I said did it with reluctance. And since I am the flagship, if anything, it will be me who will take the blame if anything go wrong so you don't have to worry about yourselves", declared the purple haired destroyer.

Even if Akatsuki words were meant to reassure her sisters, it didn't really work out. On the contrary, Hibiki felt bad for suggesting that they take such risks while Ikazuchi and Inazuma tensed from the implications. After all three of them prefered to share the flak from their common decision that just having Akatsuki shoulder all the weight of the consequences.

After a minute of tense silence, the door of the dinning room was opened. All destroyers turned their gaze and recognized the maid who was carrying a plate of tray of cups of what looked like tea.  
However the maid was not alone. Behind her came a girl in her late teens who was pretty tall. She wore a white blouse and long black skirt with white frills at the bottom. A blue ribbon of the same color of her eyes was tied to her neck and another set of ribbons tied her insanely long blond hair in two massive twintails.  
The girl approached the table with confident steps and stopped mere inchs of it, as the maid silently distributed the drinks. She had a confident smile on her face and seemed to appraise her guest with a playful gaze.

"Greetings dear guests, my name is Emily. I am the daughter of the lord of this community and I came here to entertain you before my mother come to meet you", greeted the girl.

One after the other, the destroyers of the sixth division greeted and presented themselves. Emily couldn't help but notice the great difference in personalities of these girls despite their affirmation that they were sisters. The blue haired one affiched a confident facade and careful manerism but it all feeled very artificial. The white haired one was very quiet and the few time she spoke, it was in a very flat tone, as if she wasn't concerned by anything happening around her. The short haired one was on the contrary very cheerful, she had a bright expression and wasn't afraid of showing her enthousiasm. The last one, with tied brown hairs, was very shy. She stuttered from time to time but her tone was very gentle and friendly.

The four destroyers were first apprehensive at the coming of the daughter of the village lord. They expected a serious discussion and a lot of question asked. However none of this happened. Instead, Emily engaged in a carefree chat, speaking a lot about herself and idle things. She asked no difficult questions about their origins and their reasons to come to her village. They just had to reveal that they travelled and the only reaction were a flow of questions about the place they visited and how they were lucky to have a chance to see the world. Despite impecable mannerism, Emily eventually came to complain how she never was allowed to set a foot outside of the settlement boudaries and how her mother was too authoritative over her. All in all, the blond girl seemed like a sheltered rich youth who yearned so excitement in her life.  
That kind of talk allowed the destroyers to relax. They hardly learned things of values but at the moment they were just glad that no difficult questions were asked.

After some more time of pleasant chatting, the door of the dinneroom opened. Again came the maid that none of the girls noticed the absence after she served the drinks. Again she came with another tray of drinks and again she was accompagned by another woman.  
The moment the destroyers layed their eyes on her, it was evident to them that it was this lady who was in charge. She was clothed on a magnificent deep red dress that was covering the vast majority of her body except a fair amount of cleavage that made several of the girls blush. Her hair was light green and was tied in a complex and regal braid. Enthroned on her head was a silver tiara with stange dull brownish gems at its center. Her face was calm and composed and affiched a benevolent smile.

"Accept my apology for my lateness, young ladies", greeted the woman with a curtsy. "My name is Cassandra, lord of this settlement. I hope my dear daughter managed to no bore you before I finally arrived".

The destroyers shook their heads as the lord of the village took a seat next to her daughter, in front of them. Once the owner of the mansion was comfortably seated, Akatsuki spoke to present herself and her sisters.

"My name is Akatsuki and here are my sisters : Hibiki, Ikazuchi, Inazuma. We are all very grateful for your invitation", curtisied Akatsuki as it was expected from a proper lady.

"You're very welcome. When I heard words of the arrival of four young ladies, I found quite adequate to invite you for lunch. But I can't help to be curious, what were you doing this region ?", said Cassandra while elegently sipping tea.

"They were travelling mother. They said they came from the south and crossed the Gold Region's wastelands.", enthousiastically answered Emily.

"Is that so ? That is quite impressive by itself. But pray tell, where do you come from and where do you go ?", asked the lord.

The destroyers winced at her question they managed to avoid it until now. They now faced the choice to answer somewhat truthfully at the possible expanse of the naval base or to craft a lie on the spot, a quite difficult endeavor since they knew next to nothing of the land they were on.

As the four sisters nervously eyed each others, Cassandra let out an amused smile.

"My apologies. If my question does bother you, you're not obligated to answer. In fact it is quite rude of me to expect a response when I am the only one who is doing the questioning. Let's turn the tables, shall we ? You can ask any question you want, and I will answer. It will probably be easier for you to trust me after I satisfied your curiosity", spoke the lady.

Akatsuki, Ikazuchi and Inazuma nervously laughted after their host had seen through their discomfort and began mustering their wits to find pertinent questions to ask. However they were immedialy beaten by Hibiki who didn't wait to question the woman.

"Where are the men ?", she asked in a neutral tone. "Since we've entered this settlement, we haven't seen any".

It was Indeed something that the girls noticed but kept quiet. As they travelled across the village, they spotted women and girls of different ages but not once did they spot any man. It was something that did raise question. How can a society could sustain itself with only females ? How could the women give birth to children ? Where was Emily father ?

"That is quite a common question asked by previous travellers and the answer is quite simple. It simply seems that men in general does not accomodate well to the lifestyle we are enjoying here", said the lady as if it was a regrettable thing.

It did and didn't answer the question but for now, Hibiki decided to drop the subject in case it leaded to something problematic.

"Hum... Where do your food comes from ? We didn't see any fields outside of the village, only small gardens behind some houses, nanodesu", tried Inazuma.

"We import most of our food from the exterior. We used to receive the visit to quite a lot of people before : merchants, adventurers, heroes and even lost people. However since a while their number decreased and it get me quite worried".

"Maybe it's because the terrain is quite hostile to the west ?", offered Ikazuchi. "Anyway, you're the lord of this place but do you answer to anybody else ?", she then asked her usual benevolent smile.

"I nominally answer to the king of Grangold. However, by the law of the kingdom, lords does possess a fair share of autonomy and the royal authority usually don't meddle in our affairs", explained the woman. But as Akatsuki was about to pose a question herself, the lord of the village immediatly continued. "You all do pose quite a lot of complicated questions. It is strange for simple travellers to show so much interest to a settlement they were not even meant to visit".

Inazuma tried her best to not show how nervous she got at Cassandra suspicion as she knew she was the one who's nervousness showed the most on her face. She suspected that entering the village might get them in trouble and personally didn't want to take any chance. However, as she follower her elder sisters, she gradually came to think that it wasn't such a bad idea.  
However, now that the owner of the village seemed dubious about them, she couldn't help but regret her decision to not oppose Hibiki's idea. And the worst was that they were the ones who exposed themselves with their array of questions. Did Cassadra was suspicious of them all along ? Were they baited by the woman by her willingness to answer anything they asked ?

"I don't think that strange at all. I mean, if we are curious about something, what is wrong to ask ?", came the saving voice of Ikazuchi. The brown haired destroyer didn't seem affected at all by the sudden tension but Inazuma could tell from the tiny quivering of her voice that she too was tense.

"Is that so ?", calmy asked Cassandra. "Yes, I guess you're right. Children are sure lucky to speak with such airiness", she then sofly added.

Ikazuchi inwardly let out a huge sigh of relieve. She and her sisters let their guard down, forgetting they were technically in hostile territory. Sure, even if they angered the lord they could quite easily get out since she doubted that they had any mean to restrain them, but she was pretty certain that the commander wouldn't appreciate to be put at odd with someone of authority because of them. After all her duty was to be reliable to the commander, not a liability !

As a tense silence was hovering in the dining room, the sound of the door opening once more took everyone attention. It was again the maid who entered with this time an array of plate instead of drinks.  
Without a word, the maid served the plates on the table, adding white and silver curtly of such luxury that Akastuki head was nearly spinning.  
Unaffected by the pageantry, Hibiki simply noticed of delicate the disposition of the food was and felt her stomach rumble once more. She also noted that the food was mostly made of vegetable with just spare servings of meat.

"Thank you Ran", said the lady when everyone had a plate in front of them and then invited her guests to begin to eat.

Akatsuki happily ate a slice lettuce with a little bit of cheese. She used to not be very fond of vegetable since most were pretty much tasteless but after so time she realised that a proper lady has to be able to eat her greens. However she did still struggle with spicy food and so she let the small piments aside for the moment.  
As she looked to the sides, she saw that her sisters were also enjoying the food. Hibiki, as expected, ate the piments and bellpeppers like it was nothing. Ikazuchi actually ate her spicy greens with enthousiasm as if she was taking a challenge of some sort.  
Finally when her gaze fell on Inazuma, Akatsuki found her youngest sister blankly stare at her plate. Inazuma managed to have a lucky draw in Akatsuki eyes since she didn't have any piments or pepperbells. Instead, she got some slices of tomatoes, a little bit of carrot and a mostly an eggplant of massive proportion.

When she realised what her sister had in front of her, Akatsuki froze. Inazuma was a sweet girl. Her gentle and shy personality made her hard to dislike and as such she was adored by everyone in the base.  
However even if the brown haired destroyer was very tolerant about a lot of things, she still possessed things she didn't like. And to say that among those eggplants were one of her pet peeve would be a massive understatement. Inazuma hated eggplants.  
Akatsuki didn't know why her sister made a fixation on eggplants but it was a thing so disproportionate as to change her personality to a ninety nine degree. The purple haired girl could already spot the signs : the eyes of her little sister were already darkening, loosing their innocent shine, while her facial muscle tensed, washing away her usual gentle expression.

Inwardly, Akatsuki panicked and, without looking away from Inazuma, quickly tapped on the arm of Hibiki who was seated next to her. The white haired destroyer then dispassionatly shifted her gaze toward her elder sister and then to her younger one. However when she saw in what state the brown haired destroyer was, her usual impassive attitude broke.

"Der'mo", Hibiki silently cursed. While she has been eating, she has thought about how delicate their situation was since the lord of the settlement seemed somewhat suspicious of them. However, now that Inazuma was affected by another of her "fits", she realised that Cassandra was the least of their problems.  
As Ikazuchi grabbed the arm of her unstable little sister the second she realised her situation, the Hibiki tried to think of how to resolve their predicament but in reality she didn't know what to do.

It was not the first time Inazuma lost her mind. The first time was years ago during a battle off the north-east coast of Malaysia. Even now, noone knew for sure why her sister mind suddently changed, only that at that moment and for the rest of the battle, the kindhearted and shy Inazuma was remplaced by something vicious and brutal that rampaged until all the ennemies fled or went to the bottom of the ocean.  
After this event, everyone though it was a one time occurrence due to some accumulated stress and the fact that the timid destroyer recovered her mind shortly after without remembering a thing seemed to support this idea. However the occurrence eventually came to repeat itself of the rest of their service. It mostly came back during battles but also during patrols and even when they were not even in combat. It was still rare and seemed to be triggered in reaction by some random events or objects, provoking each time the same reaction but at varying degree. However, each time Inazuma lost her mind, her eyes blackened and her usual gentle voice lost all of her benevolence and while she directed all her violence and hate solely on the object of her ire without threatening her companion, its still terrified her sisters when her gaze void if any warmth shifted toward them, barely aknowledging them as living beings.

"Is something wrong ?", asked the somewhat concerned voice of Cassandra, having obviously spotted the odd behavior of the youngest sister. "Maybe do you dislike vegetables ?"

At these words, Inazuma blackened eyes shifted to the lord of the village who, instead of looking intimidated, seemed quite amused.

"Nasu wa kirai nanodesu !", growled the Brown haired destroyer, forgoing english to her mother tongue instead.

"Inazuma !", cried Akatsuki in half indignation to her sister rudeness and half desperation to snap her out of her unusual mind.

Obviously, Akatsuki attempt to placate her sister didn't work as the latter didn't stop to glare at Cassandra with obvious hostile intent. Even in this state, Hibiki somewhat trusted Inazuma to not physically lash out just because she was presented eggplants but as the same time she couldn't remember seeing her little sister show so much hostility toward the person who served her the dish she hated so much.

It was at this moment she felt it. It was a killing intent strong enough that made her instinct scream at her to prepare for battle to the point that her fairies moved to their battle stations by themselves. However, from what she managed to pinpoint, the killing intent didn't came from her sister but from the other side of the table, to the form of Cassandra.

"I was willing to extend this appetizer a little longer in order to squeeze a little bit more informations since it seemed you were hiding something, but finally I decided it was time to begin the main course", declared Cassandra as something in her body seemed to shift.

The next second, before any of the destroyers could say or do anything, Inazuma threw her dinning knife at their host, must to her sisters shock. However, what shocked them more was to see the knife bury itself into her torso where her blood red dress fused with her skin and became similar to mud.

"Mother ! Could you not have let them alone just this time ? I finally made some friends from outside this village !", complained Emily as her body too changed, her long twintails becoming massive golden octopus tentacles while countless smaller pink ones appeared from below her dress.

"Be quiet my stupid daughter. The strong don't befriend the weak, it only consume them", answered the monstruous woman, her humanish upper body standing on a muddy and extending body.

It didn't take long for the destroyers to recognize the danger and quickly, Inazuma first, they dived toward their rigging they putted aside when they sat down.  
However their opponents were fast and one of the golden tentacles of Emily grabbed Akatsuki arm while a muddy appendage from Cassandra went for Inazuma and Hibiki.  
The white haired destroyer only had time to roll and grab her armor plating in the form a large metal rectangular shield to protect herself. The appendage struck hard and the fizzle she heard against the steel of her shield convinced her that it was better to not let this muddy touch her skin.  
Hibiki glanced at Inazuma who managed to evade the blow but it prevented her to reach her equipment. The second elder destroyer grabbed one of her turret and aimed to the elder woman. The shot was loud and surprised the two monstruous women as the shell quickly travelled the body body of Cassandra with enough force to shred through it, penetrate the wall behind her and explode somewhere deep inside the mansion.  
Inwardly, Hibiki regretted her choice to go for her turret instead of a anti-air gun or a machine gun as she was too close too her ennemies for the fuse of her shell to activate and detonate at the contact with her target. She regretted more her choice when she saw the massive hole in the center of Cassandra body to be filled with more mud.

At the same time, Akatsuki struggled with strong grip of the tentacles on her arm. As much as she was confident she could resist well in a context of brute strength, the fact that she couldn't get a proper footing prevented her to stop herself to be drawed toward the young monster girl. She still stuggled to get her arm out but the thick appendage was wrapped several times around her member and the octopus suckers prevented them to move a mere milimeter. Realising the futility of her actions, Akatsuki instead prepared to simply charge Emily, and as much unrefined as it was, Knock her out with her small fists. However, she didn't do go that far as a sudden cry came from her left as Ikazuchi charged at Emily armed with her anchor.  
Realising the new threat, the young monster girl launched her other tentacle on Ikazuchi but the short haired destroyer dodged by diving under it, forcing Emily to let Akatsuki's arm go to attack with her second tentacle.

"Ikazuchi-", began Akatsuki before being cut by her sister who jumped in front of her to evade the second blow.

"Don't worry, you can rely on me in these occasions too !", she exclaimed. "Go get your rigging now !".

Instead of complaining to be ordered by her little sister, Akatsuki excecuted herself and went for her rigging. She quickly glanced to her two other siblings and saw them defending themselves against muddy tendrills from Cassandra, Hibiki shielding herself with her armor plate while the crazed Inazuma evaded while trying to get close to her own rigging.

In short notice, Akatsuki reached her rigging and since she was not directly engaged, managed to fully equip herself. Once she was done, she turned to their adversaries, her turret in one hand, her anchor in the other and her own armor plating on her left shoulder.  
To one side Ikazuchi managed to close the distance with Emily but the latter had her small tentacles at the bottom of her body grab the feet of the destroyer while her thick tentacles on her head blocked Ikazuchi blow.  
On the other side, Hibiki dropped her shield which was horribly corroded and retreated while firing her dual guns turret while Inazuma was still kept far from her armement. Cassandra form reformed each time she was pierced and her muddy body rapidely extended to cover an increased amount of surface on the floor, walls and ceiling.  
Akatsuki hardly had time to think at what to do. All she knew that as an elder sister she had to protect her siblings. So she let her instincts take over her body and moved.

The door of the room violently opened to reveal the form of the maid. She too became a monster as gigantic red tentacles sprouted from under her dress. Akatsuki barely registered her appareance. Instead she ran toward Emily and Ikazuchi and struck toward the tentacular girl with her anchor. Again Emily blocked the blow with her huge golden tentacle but obviously flinched at the strength of the blow. The leadship quickly raised her shield to prevent the second tentacle to grab her left side and pushed foward until she got close enough to her target.  
Ikazuchi was on the ground struggling to get away from the small tentacles which were carrying her toward a strange organ protuding from below the monster girl skirt. With all her might, Akatsuki stepped with on foot on as much tentacles as possible, making the wooden floor crack below. It was enough to visibly hurt Emily which let out a pained cry and allowed Ikazuchi to quickly crawl away. Not wanting to let her adversary catch her once she recovered from the pain, Akatsuki followed her stomping with a kick in the middle of the belly with enough force to throw the blonde monster toward the maid that was coming to her aid.

"Your turn !", ordered Akatsuki at her younger sister. Understanding what she meant, Ikazuchi ran toward her rigging.

With Emily and the maid temporaly out of the fight, Akatsuki turned toward Cassandra as she was about to corner her two other sisters. Akatsuki aimed her turret at the more dangerous threat and with a mental command, ordered her fairies to bear all the smaller caliber guns toward the same direction.  
As all the guns fired, a huge stream of shells and bullets fell on the form of the lord of the village, shredding her body into pieces. However it wasn't enough as despite all the firepower, she body continued to reform itself at the same time it took damages. All Akatsuki managed to accomplish was attracting the monster's attention and apparently making her very angry, if the the scowl on her reformating flesh was anything to go by.

As Ikazuchi finished equiping herself with the blare of dozens of guns firing in the background, she was rejoined by Hibiki and Inazuma. The white haired destroyer didn't waste time in words and equiped the rest of of her rigging. Inazuma too went directly toward her amament and from the crazed smile and the low snigerring she displayed, Ikazuchi wasn't sure if it was a good idea to let her direct little sister take part into the battle.

In any case, Ikazuchi quickly banished those thoughts as Akatsuki was still fighting and needed her support. So she turned toward the fight and saw the disgusting sight of the falling and reforming body of Cassandra slowly approaching her elder sister. However the most imminent threat didn't came from there, instead she turned toward Emily and the maid which recovered their bearing and prepared to attack Akatsuki from behind.  
Immediatly Ikazuchi threw her anchor at them since her fairies weren't yet at their battle stations. The piece of heavy metal flew toward the pair of tentacular monsters and having spotted it quickly, Emily swatted it aside with one of her massive tentacles on her head. However Ikazuchi still held the chain in her hand and violently pulled on it, making it go back toward their targets which surprised them enough that they didn't deflect it in time before the Anchor it the maid side while the long chain partly entangled them both. Ikazuchi knew that they would quickly get up and recover but that already got all the time she needed. Her fairies were now at their battle stations and the short haired destroyer aimed her main turret at her target. She felt kinda bad to fire on young girls and women but if she got this messy situation right, they actually planned to eat her and her sisters at some point during this lunch. So she fired and two shells went straight toward their targets. With a last second reaction Emily and the maid managed to get their tentacles to shield them from the projectiles but they quickly discovered that this protection was insufficient against munitions fired by 127mm guns. Both screamed as large bits of their appendage flew in different directions of the room. They somewhat barely managed to deviate the shells to avoid fatal blow but the pain they felt seemed to be largely enough to paralyze them on the ground with bleeding wounds.

A sudden explosion behind her attracted the attention of Ikazuchi. As she quickly turned, the short haired destroyer eyes met a large hole in the wall that led to the outside. Next to it was Hibiki and Inazuma, who seemed relatively tame for the moment despite the still creepy smile on her face.

"Let's get out", calmly said Hibiki as she jumped out of the hole.

Ikazuchi turned to Akatsuki who was still relentlessly firing at Cassandra. She apparently heard Hibiki's words since she turned and began to ran toward their exit, the 25mm AA guns on her rigging covering her retreat. Ikazuchi herself didn't wait any longer and ran toward the hole. However instead of jumping outside she stopped as Inazuma was still there.

"Inazuma…", she said hesitantly as she met the blackened eyes of her dear little sister. However it took only a moment before steeling herself. "Let's go !", she exclaimed with a smile while taking her hand.

Inazuma didn't react the first two seconds before smiling from ear to ear. It was an horrible smile, one full of malice and madness, but somehow Ikazuchi knew that any of these ill intentions weren't directed at her. As she was about to gently pull her sister arm, Inazuma grabbed something from her rigging with her other hand and presented it before Ikazuchi face. It was a metal canister with round angles.

"A departing gift", snickered Inazuma in such an uncharastically way that Ikazuchi cringed a little bit from it and from the object that she was presenting.

As both of them jumped out of the wall just before muddy tendrills fell on them, Inazuma threw the canister she held. Once they touched the grassy ground of the manor garden, both girls ran partly to join their two other sisters, partly to get as far away from the manor as possible while Inazuma was laughting madly.

When all destroyers were finally reunited, crouching among the hedges of the garden, a loud explosion erupted from the manor, making half of it crumble upon itself.

"What did you do ?!", cried a surprised Akatsuki.

"Inazuma tried a new imaginative use of depth charges", nervously explained Ikazuchi.

"We should escape now before the other inhabitants find us", nonchalently declared Hibiki before Akatsuki could berate the two other.

One hour later, the four destroyers stopped to catch their breath after their flight from the Lady's Village.

As much as they wished to stealthily get away after having blown up the lord manor, the plan didn't really went as expected. First when they exited the gardens, they were quickly spotted by noone else than the woman who brought them inside the village earlier. When she noticed the four destroyers, the umbrella woman dropped all appearance and she too transformed into a monster, this time with the lower body of a huge subterrerian insect with numerous little legs. She immediatly charged toward them but was quickly dispatched as she seemed much weaker that the three other monsters inside the manor.

After this incident, the sixth destroyer division quickly discovered that all the denizens of the village were monsters disguised into respectable ladies. And as a large number of them attacked them, it was easy to deduce that they all wanted a bite of them.

While they fled the village, they had to fight a significant number of them and while most of the time they were forced to close combat, since they were now outside they had the ability to use their guns more freely which resulted in great destruction as the prevention of collateral damage was not their priority at the moment, espacially in the case of Inazuma.

So while they managed to loose their pursuers, the girls could still manage to spot on the horizon the black smoke emitted by the fires they caused.

"That was not how a Lady's Village should be !", complained Akatsuki as she put a finger in large hole of her torned sleeve.

"I'm amazed you're worrying about that when we all nearly got eaten", deadpanned Ikazuchi. "Are you alright now Inazuma ?", she then asked to the brown haired girl who recovered her mind.

"I'm sorry. I caused you a lot of troubles again", sniffed Inazuma before Ikazuchi hand came on her head, patting her gently.

"We would have been in problems either way", stated Hibiki with her usual emotionless voice.

"Aaaah ! We are going to be yelled at when we got to base !", cried Akatsuki in desesperation, nearly plucking her hairs out of her head.

"I hope Tenryuu-san and Tatsuta-san fared better than us", muttered Ikazuchi while the three other silently nodded because otherwise the whole expedition would have been a catastophe.

**A/N :**

**So there are 9k words without counting the author's notes. It took me some time because it is a long chapter and I had trouble to find proper wording at some points.**

**Like usual, I'll first answer the reviews : **

**Guest : Thank you once again to your continual support. I'll try to write as much and as well as I can. For your question about Luka and Alice reactions to the shipgirls interferances, well, you will have to wait but be reassured that I plan to inplant all major characters of MGQ so obviously Luka and Alice will be featured.  
**

**Confessor Dolan : Thank you for your praise even though this fic is intended to have humor, I never planned to write a lazy crack fic and I try to put as much effort in characterisation and world developpement as I can. As such you probably noticed that consequently the plot didn't progress much. As for your concern, I want to reassure you. I want to make characters which have coherency and are overall making sense. As you've seen, in this chapter I confronted KC characters to Lady's Village (I was planning to writing it well before you comment and began to write it days after). You will have to wait 2-3 chapters to know what the naval base reaction will be toward the denizens of Lady's Village but also all the encounters they made until then.**

**Since I don't know which universes my readers are familiars to, I'll explain one aspect of the chapter that may seem obscure to some. For those who are not familiar with KC fandom, there is a meme in the form of an alter ego version of Inazuma which is her opposite personality wise. It is called plasma-chan and was first featured stating how she hated eggplants (_Nasu wa kirai nanodesu_). I found it funny to feature it here.  
In a related manner, I would be interested to know with which universe are you the most familiar.  
**

**At the begining, this fic was meant to be a one-shot or something looking like a collection of small funny stories. However, now that I decided to make it a full fledged story, I find the tag "humor" to be a little bit restrictive as I want to address more serious themes or themes which are not related to humor. It doesn't mean I will abandon humor in this story, I just want to make something more proper. So I am pondering if I should change the tag to something broader like "adventure". In this case too I would like the readers input. **

**Anyway, thank you for reading and see you next time.**


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